Was 2017 a superbloom year?
A superbloom on the record
Yes — California State Parks put 2017 on the record at Anza-Borrego, Antelope Valley and Ocotillo Wells State Vehicular Recreation Area. 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 California State Parks
State Parks wrote of the super blooms at Anza-Borrego, the Antelope Valley poppy reserve and Ocotillo Wells, and later called 2017 the most dramatic bloom in nearly twenty years.
What made it: About six and a half inches of winter rain landing on desert that years of drought had stripped of competing grasses — the seed bank had the ground to itself.
The Carrizo Plain had its own big spring that year: the BLM called it a banner year rather than a superbloom, though the USGS titled its satellite view of it exactly that.
California State Parks, February 2019 · USGS — Landsat, spring 2017
The rain behind it: 2016–17
Our station totals do not reach back to the 2016–17 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.