Was 2016 a superbloom year?
A superbloom on the record
Yes — the National Park Service put 2016 on the record at Death Valley. We didn't decide that, and we don't decide any of them: the sources are on this page.
What the agency said
On the record with the National Park Service
The park announced the best wildflower bloom in a decade, and used the words "super bloom" for it.
What made it: Unusual October 2015 storms soaked the valley floor — the National Weather Service put more than three inches on one area in five hours — and the winter that followed kept the seedlings going.
Fall rain before it: 1.30", September through November, as Death Valley reports it. The park counts its autumn rain separately because a desert annual that never germinates in the fall has nothing to bloom with in the spring.
The rain behind it: 2015–16
Our station totals do not reach back to the 2015–16 winter, so there are no rain figures to put beside this spring. What is on this page is the record itself — what the agency wrote down, and where.