Wildflowers in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California in 2005.
The last two years in the desert Southwest have been bone dry. Fortunately that all changed late last week. Areas around Palm Springs received around an inch and a half of rain – even more in many areas, more rain fell during that storm then in the past year and a half! Some of the areas around Phoenix also received 2 inches of rain.
We are planning on spending time in the Anza Borrego Desert State Park later this winter. I was having trouble finding rain totals for this remote area, so I called the visitor center and talked with a ranger named Bob. Borrego officially received .88 of an inch of rain, the whole area received a good soaking! This rain isn’t enough to assure a good wildflower bloom, Bob felt the area would need a couple more storms like it for a good year. He did say he was concerned that many of the perennials would not have made it another year without some rain, at the minimum, he felt this rain bought them another year of life. I’m keeping my fingers crossed!
This photo was from 2005 during the amazing “100 year wildflower bloom”.
Comments 4
nice Ron. So you made it there in 05 also! I was still living in SF at the time but came down here just for that. I don’t there has been any flowers since then though. around here it rained over an inch last week.
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Yeah, I wasn’t planning on leaving Alaska that winter until I started reading about the amazing bloom. I figured I might not be around for the next 100 year bloom 🙂 , so I flew down last minute and lived in a little suv rental car for 5 weeks.
I have past through there the two years since, and you are right – there hasn’t been a thing. I don’t need a big flower year, but it would be nice if there were a few patches. Maybe this year.
you have better air quality in Seward than what I have to breathe so your odds of the making it to the next big bloom are greater than mine. lol, that car rental bill must have been huge. Have you ever been to Slab City?
the interesting thing about that 60 inch rainfall year we had was that the Antelope Valley was just an average year from what I was told. It looked good to me, but when an old-timer tells me it is average then I’ll take their word for it.
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I think the rental ended up being about $600 for the month + , not too bad really.
I got lucky and visited Antelope Valley for the first time in 2003 – that was a great year! I went back in 2005 and it was nothing compared to 2003 – I didn’t even stay. I read somewhere that Antelope Valley needs moderate rain to be good. Real wet years aren’t usually very good because the weeds out grow the poppies.