{"id":511669,"date":"2026-03-08T19:25:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T19:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/511669\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T19:25:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T19:25:15","slug":"death-valley-sees-its-most-spectacular-superbloom-in-a-decade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/511669\/","title":{"rendered":"Death Valley sees its most spectacular superbloom in a decade"},"content":{"rendered":"

Abby Wines, acting deputy superintendent at Death Valley National Park, said that on average, Death Valley typically receives only about 2 inches of rainfall each year.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom November through early January, we had about two and a half inches of rain, so we had more than our annual average in just two and a half months,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Wines said that some wildflowers usually emerge in the park every spring<\/a>, but superblooms (though that\u2019s not an official botanical term) only occur after especially wet fall and winter seasons.<\/p>\n

The most extensive blooms \u2014 ones that can be seen at low elevations almost everywhere in the park \u2014 also need the \u201cright\u201d type of rain, according to Blacker.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need multiple days of drizzly, foggy, gentle rain that soaks in, but not the heavy monsoon rains that wash out our highways and destroy our roads,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd then we need mild temperatures going into spring, because once the flowers come up, their big enemy is wind and heat.\u201d<\/p>\n

The types of wildflowers that bloom in the desert are known as ephemerals. Unlike cacti, which store water to survive hot and arid environments<\/a>, these flowers can exist for long periods of time in seed form in the soil.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can think of it like drought evasion,\u201d said Erik Rakestraw, a curator of botany at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson. \u201cIn their seed form, it\u2019s like they\u2019re not even existing. They\u2019re just laying in the soil.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the proper conditions, the seeds will germinate. Then, after the flowers are pollinated, they\u2019ll turn back to seeds and the cycle will begin again.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there isn\u2019t a good rain event next year, or even the year after that, or several years in a row, those seeds have evolved to just sit and wait it out,\u201d Rakestraw said.<\/p>\n

For anyone hoping to catch this year\u2019s superbloom, time is of the essence.<\/p>\n

Wines said the wildflowers at lower elevations are only expected to persist until mid- to late March. At higher elevations, blooms are forecast to emerge from around April to June. But both of those timing estimates depend heavily on weather, she added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Abby Wines, acting deputy superintendent at Death Valley National Park, said that on average, Death Valley typically receives…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":511670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-511669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}