Rare wildflowers taking over Death Valley

From Quartz:

Death Valley is defying its name.

The California and Nevada desert, which is the driest in North America and one of the hottest in the world, is experiencing a bloom of wildflowers after an exceptionally wet October. Typically, the area gets two inches of rainfall per year; in October, the National Weather Service estimated that flash floods may have generated up to three inches of rainfall in five hours, likely a result of the El Niño weather pattern in California.

The result is that for the past two months, the suddenly fertile desert is fostering an explosion of wildflowers, unofficially coined a “super bloom.” These super blooms happen about once every 10 years; the last ones in 2005 and 1998 were also due to an El Niño weather pattern, according to the National Park Service. “I never imagined that so much life could exist here in such staggering abundance and intense beauty,” Alan Van Valkenburg, a park ranger who has lived in Death Valley for 25 years, said in a press release.

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