Every superbloom the parks have on the record
Superblooms are rarer than the word is. The parks that manage the famous desert fields use it sparingly, almost always looking back, and several of the springs people remember as superblooms were never called one by anybody with a ranger hat on. This is the list with the sources attached: who said it, about where, and what the rain had done first.
For where the current season stands, the superbloom outlook tracks the rain gauges desert by desert. This page is the history behind it.
The record, spring by spring
1998 — Death Valley
On the record with the National Park Service
Death Valley keeps a short list of its own superblooms, and 1998 is on it.
What made it: An El Niño winter pushed the storm track over the park, and the autumn before it delivered rain the desert normally waits years for.
The park named 1998 in later releases rather than at the time — the record is a look back, not a bulletin.
2005 — Death Valley, Anza-Borrego
On the record with the National Park Service and California State Parks
Death Valley counts 2005 among its superblooms, and California State Parks called that spring at Anza-Borrego one of the greatest blooms in a decade or more.
What made it: An El Niño winter again: a wet autumn in Death Valley followed by storms that kept coming, and better than eight inches across the season at Anza-Borrego.
NPS — Death Valley wildflowers · California State Parks, January 2005
2016 — Death Valley
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.
2017 — Anza-Borrego, Antelope Valley, Ocotillo Wells State Vehicular Recreation Area
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
2019 — Anza-Borrego, Antelope Valley, Ocotillo Wells State Vehicular Recreation Area
On the record with California State Parks
State Parks names 2019 alongside 2017 whenever it looks back at the desert super blooms of the last decade.
What made it: The same pattern that made 2017: a genuinely wet winter arriving after dry years, at parks whose seed banks were waiting for it.
California State Parks, March 2020 · California State Parks, February 2023
2023 — Carrizo Plain
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
2026 — Death Valley, Carrizo Plain
On the record with the National Park Service, and NASA for the Carrizo Plain
Death Valley records 2026 as a superbloom on its own wildflower page. On the Carrizo Plain the bloom was published from orbit by NASA rather than announced by the BLM, which kept to its usual wording.
What made it: A record wet autumn in Death Valley — the park reported 2.41 inches across September to November 2025 — with seedlings up by December; roughly double the usual rain on the Carrizo Plain, and soil moisture well above average there by February.
NPS — Death Valley wildflowers · NASA Earth Observatory, March 2026
What fell the autumn before
Death Valley is the one park that publishes the number behind its own list. It counts fall rain — September through November, before the winter storms have shown their hand — because a desert annual that never germinates in autumn has nothing to bloom with in March.
| Spring | Fall rain before it |
|---|---|
| 1998 | 1.60" |
| 2005 | 2.70" |
| 2016 | 1.30" |
| 2026 | 2.41" |
Figures as the park reports them, on the Death Valley wildflower page and in its February 2023 bloom update . An ordinary year at Furnace Creek brings about two inches across the whole season.
The wet years that never earned the word
This is the half of the record that keeps the other half honest. Rain alone doesn't make a superbloom, and a spring can be genuinely good — worth the drive, worth the camera — without anyone official reaching for the term.
2023 — Death Valley
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.
2024 — Death Valley, Anza-Borrego, Antelope Valley, Carrizo Plain
the National Park Service, California State Parks and the BLM
A wet winter that none of the three agencies called a superbloom: Death Valley said one was not expected, State Parks forecast a better-than-average spring and left it there, and the BLM used no such word for the Carrizo Plain.
2026 — Anza-Borrego, Antelope Valley
California State Parks
The same winter that gave Death Valley a superbloom was called moderate-to-strong for Anza-Borrego and the poppy reserve in the State Parks desert outlook — good, and not the word.
What the rain gauge can and can't tell you
The bars on the outlook page compare each season's rain with the totals that came before the big springs. That is a useful thing to watch months ahead, and it is not a verdict. The 2025–26 season is the example worth keeping in mind: it cleared the big-year mark at all four deserts here, and the agencies still split on what it produced.
Timing decides as much as volume. Rain that arrives in one storm runs off; the same inches spread across autumn and winter germinate seed and keep it alive. A hot spell or a week of drying wind can close a season that the gauge said was on its way. The parks are looking out the window, and we are looking at the pattern — so the numbers here are the reason to keep watching, and their pages are the reason to get in the car.
| Desert | 2025–26 rain | Big-year mark | Superblooms on the record |
|---|---|---|---|
| Death Valley | 2.57" | 2.0" | 1998, 2005, 2016, 2026 |
| Anza-Borrego | 4.44" | 3.5" | 2005, 2017, 2019 |
| Antelope Valley | 8.01" | 5.0" | 2017, 2019 |
| Carrizo Plain | 11.55" | 6.0" | 2023, 2026 |
Rain measured at the nearest long-running NOAA station to each desert, over the 2025–26 rain year, October 1 through May 31.
Where the current season stands
The superbloom outlook carries the rain to date at each desert, what a superbloom needs, and a link to every park's own bloom-status page — updated as the season develops.