Death Valley's wildflowers and lake are a picture of climate whiplash
Death Valley has ping ponged between severe drought and record rainfall, giving rise to extra-tall wildflowers, an ephemeral lake and dead bushes.
In California’s boom-and-bust climate, Death Valley has offered some of the strangest scenes over the past few years.
Some of the area’s perennial creosote bushes died back during a severe drought that hampered the region through 2022. Then torrential downpours — from the remnants of Hurricane Hilary and subsequent storms — revived annual wildflowers from seed over the last year.
During the winter, extreme rainfall resurrected an ancient lake that is now disappearing once again.
Together, these extremes have created bizarre juxtapositions in the famed desert.
“I could take you to a field of dead creosote bushes with nice wildflowers springing up in between,” said Patrick Donnelly, a conservation biologist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “For a plant, it’s a post-apocalyptic wasteland — everything is dead — then spring comes and flowers are sprouting between the corpses.”
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