Earth

California superbloom carpets landscape in color

Posted by
Dave Adalian
and
April 12, 2023
California superbloom: Yellow and purple hills from a carpet of flowers.
EarthSky friend Mimi Ditchie captured this photo of the California superbloom on April 6, 2023. She saw blankets of wildflowers at Carrizo Plain National Monument, located 150 miles (240 km) from Los Angeles. Used with permission. Thank you, Mimi!

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California superbloom appears after record rainfall

What some are calling the year of the superbloom is underway in the Golden State. Fields of colorful wildflowers are bursting to life after years of drought in California. It’s a spectacular sight, as Mother Nature puts on a show of shows, in celebration of record rainfall.

The Theodore Payne Foundation Wild Flower Hotline – now in its 40th year – is providing weekly updates on the best superbloom locations in Southern and Central California.

Do you have a photo of this year’s superbloom in California? Submit it to EarthSky community page!

The California superbloom from space

Satellite image with mountains shown in green and yellow.
This Landsat 9 image shows the desert blooming in Carrizo Plain National Monument on April 6, 2023. Image via NASA Earth Observatory.

Floral display needs a drought to set the stage

Mother Nature needs a drought before she can cover the deserts, plains and hills with astonishing hues. As meteorologist Heather Waldman at KCRA New in Sacremento, California explained back in February:

A prolonged period of drought sets the stage. Several years’ worth of drier-than-average conditions causes wildflower seeds to lay dormant and build up rather than bloom. The drier conditions also prevent weeds and other vegetation from overgrowing, leaving more nutrients in the soil.

Superblooms are more frequent in Southern California, where conditions are generally drier. But it looks as if Northern California and the coastal regions will see their share of color, too, in this 2023 wildflower season.

The San Joaquin Valley and Sierra Nevada are getting in on the act, of course.

Bottom line: A California superbloom is underway for 2023. Drought conditions followed by copious rain led to this beautiful outburst of wildflowers.

Posted 
April 12, 2023
 in 
Earth

Dave Adalian

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About the Author:
Award-winning reporter and editor Dave Adalian's love affair with the cosmos began during a long-ago summer school trip to the storied and venerable Lick Observatory atop California's Mount Hamilton, east of San Jose in the foggy Diablos Mountain Range and far above Monterey Bay at the edge of the endless blue Pacific Ocean. That field trip goes on today, as Dave still pursues his nocturnal adventures, perched in the darkness at his telescope's eyepiece or chasing wandering stars through the fields of night with the unaided eye. A lifelong resident of California's Tulare County - an agricultural paradise where the Great San Joaquin Valley meets the Sierra Nevada in endless miles of grass-covered foothills - Dave grew up in a wilderness larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined, one choked with the greatest diversity of flora and fauna in the US, one which passes its nights beneath pitch black skies rising over the some of highest mountain peaks and greatest roadless areas on the North American continent. Dave studied English, American literature and mass communications at the College of the Sequoias and the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has worked as a reporter and editor for a number of news publications on- and offline during a career spanning nearly 30 years so far. His fondest literary hope is to share his passion for astronomy and all things cosmic with anyone who wants to join in the adventure and explore the universe's past, present and future.

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