Was 2023 a superbloom year?
A superbloom on the record
Yes — the Bureau of Land Management put 2023 on the record at the Carrizo Plain. 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 Bureau of Land Management
The monument's own year-end report records a super bloom in 2023, and the busiest season the Carrizo Plain has ever counted — better than 120,000 visitors.
What made it: A far wetter winter than the plain had seen through the drought years before it.
Death Valley had no such spring that year — the two run on different winters, and one desert clearing the mark says nothing about the next.
BLM — Carrizo Plain manager's report, FY2023 · NASA Earth Observatory, April 2023
And where the word stopped
the National Park Service
With the Carrizo Plain heading for its biggest spring on record, Death Valley told visitors to expect an average bloom — about a third of an inch of fall rain had fallen, and that settles it there.
The rain behind it: 2022–23
A desert spring is paid for by the winter before it. These are the season totals at the nearest long-running weather station to each desert, October 1 through May 31, against the totals that big springs have historically followed.
| Desert | 2022–23 rain | Big-year mark | How it landed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Death Valley | 1.08" | 2.0" | Under the big-year mark |
| Anza-Borrego | 6.21" | 3.5" | Into the big-year range |
| Antelope Valley | 6.28" | 5.0" | Past the big-year mark |
| Carrizo Plain | 18.61" | 6.0" | Into the big-year range |
Measured, in the order of the table, at Death Valley (Furnace Creek), Borrego Desert Park, Lancaster (Fox Field) and New Cuyama — the nearest long-running station to each desert. Records from NOAA.