About WildflowerDates

Where the bloom windows come from

Bloom windows are based on thousands of dated, expert-confirmed flowering reports from iNaturalist naturalists, traced week by week through the year. When a few thousand people photograph the same flower in the same place across many springs, the shape of the season shows up plainly: a slow start, a crest, a fade. That shape is the curve on every region page, and the shaded band across it is the stretch when the reports pile highest — the weeks to aim for. The usual window a page states is read season by season, not from the pile as a whole: the median first week and last week across the seasons on record, so a few wet-autumn years cannot make a November start look usual. Seasons that ran well ahead of that are named on the page as the exceptions they are.

A place only gets a page once there are enough reports to trust the pattern. If a famous flower is missing from a famous region, that's why: we would rather leave it out than guess at it. This year's reports get their own read, too — whether the season is running early, late, or right on schedule.

How we read the superbloom odds

Desert springs follow the winter. Annual seeds sprout on soaking fall rain and only keep going if the storms keep coming, which means the odds are readable months before the first petal opens. Our superbloom outlook comes from winter rain totals at NOAA weather stations near each desert, compared with the rain of past big years — the springs people still talk about. We show the station and the inches on the page so you can weigh it yourself, and we say "not a superbloom year" when that's what the rain gauge says.

Who is out there looking this spring

A bloom window is the pattern across many springs. In spring itself, the people walking the ground are ahead of any pattern — and some of them write down what they saw, every week, all season. Where a region has a report like that, we send you to it rather than repeat it: the words are theirs, and they are worth reading in full.

• Wild Flower Hotline — the Theodore Payne Foundation, a new report every Friday, March through May. Covers public land across Southern and Central California.

Some regions also have one or two people who walk that ground every week in season and publish what they saw. Those reports sit on the region's own pages, and here:

• Bloom Reports from the Anza-Borrego Desert — Tom Chester; dated field reports through the season, a new page each season. Covers Anza-Borrego.
• Anza-Borrego Desert Wildflowers bloom report — Fred and Carla Melgert of Borrego Wildflowers; updated through the season, with photos of what is open. Covers Anza-Borrego.

Individual parks and reserves post their own bloom status too. Those links sit where they belong: the four desert status pages are on the outlook for the open spring, next to that desert's rain to date.

Flowers first

We name public reserves, parks, and roads only — never exact pins, never private land. We never publish exact locations, and we never send anyone onto private land. The places named here are parks, reserves, preserves, and public roads — the ones whose rangers and stewards want visitors, on the trails, where the flowers can take it.

Before a long drive

Bloom timing shifts with each year's weather — a warm February or a dry winter can move a peak by weeks in either direction, and one hot spell can end it early. Treat the windows here as the usual rhythm, not a promise. Before you commit to a long drive, check the park or reserve's own bloom status page and road conditions; they are looking out the window, and we are looking at the pattern.

Updated September 8, 2026.