Our last two stories illustrated how the storms of 2023 left lasting imprints across our Golden State. Here, we compare and contrast landscapes around Anza Borrego and the Antelope Valley to see if the deserts of southeastern California experienced spring superblooms comparable to some coastal slopes and inland valleys.
Classic extreme orographic precipitation and rain shadow effects were on full display across California during the wet winter of 2023. Coastal and mountain locations experienced a wetter-than-normal rainy season, some with double their average rain and snow totals. But precipitation dropped off dramatically as the air masses drifted southeast and down into the deserts. San Diego County offers excellent examples. The slopes around Palomar Mountain received more than 50 inches of water-equivalent precipitation. The official NWS station at Anza Borrego, located on the eastern rain shadow slopes of the same Peninsular Ranges, recorded less than 10 inches of rainfall, which is also a wet year for them. Just about 25 miles farther east, down around the Salton Trough of Imperial County, seasonal rainfall totals were only near an inch. The storms could be seen drenching mountain slopes to the west, but they dissipated when air masses descended into southeastern California’s lower deserts. Similar extremes were recorded as the inundated San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains blocked heavier rains from soaking parts of the Mojave Desert.
The results were colorful superbloom desert landscapes up along Peninsular Range and other mountain barriers and slopes, but with abrupt transitions to desolate arid terrain to the east, where you had to look more carefully to find flowering plants. Follow us as we venture around Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in April. We will discover colorful landscapes with numerous species celebrating the seasonal rains, while less fortunate desert locales to the east continued to struggle through debilitating drought. Click on to Page 2 to view high desert blooms around the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve. In both cases, we will observe some flowers and colors that only appear after exceptionally wet years.
You will notice off-road training areas in the State Vehicular Recreation Area near the eastern entrance to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. The badlands are just to the west (right). You won’t find many flowering plants worthy of attention here. Winter’s atmospheric rivers didn’t get this far east and the tracks illustrate how much of this sandy trampled desert is reserved for off highway vehicle recreation.
Looking back to the Ice Ages, when glaciers were carving the Sierra Nevada to the north, here was a land of plenty with denser biomass. Fossils indicate how eastern parts of Anza Borrego were once a more water-rich landscape with megafauna roaming through lush plant communities.
At the Borrego Badlands, signage informs passersby how today’s Peninsular Range blockade to the west creates such an efficient rain shadow on this dry east side of southern California.
Serious Badlands. Steep slopes, loose sedimentary materials, and lack of protective vegetation allow rare, sporadic, and exceptional severe precipitation and runoff events to carve intricate patterns into the rock formations. Few plant species have a chance to take hold in such an unstable landscape lacking nurturing water and mature soils.Aprons of porous alluvial fans and bajadas cover the bases of steep mountains lifted by recent vertical faulting around Borrego Valley. There is no superbloom here. Winter’s rains didn’t make it quite this far east. Even the resilient and ubiquitous creosote, scattered parklike, are struggling to bloom this spring. We’ll have to travel just a few miles west to find the color.
Desert Mallow or Apricot Mallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua) grows up through white pincushion, blue phacelia, and other species. We have wandered west toward the mountains and up Palm Canyon’s alluvial fan to find a spectacular desert superbloom.
Hiking into Palm Canyon, we discover an oasis of California Fan Palm (Washingtonia filifera) and other water-loving organisms such as willow. These are California’s only native palms. They typically grow in desert canyons near or downstream from faults where groundwater can seep up in natural springs. This grove has been reworked by debris flows and flash floods and was scorched by fire in 2020. Red chuparosa, blue phacelia, and other wildflowers decorate the rocky foreground.
More California fan palms sink their roots down around granitic boulders to brace against the next flash flood and debris flow in Borrego’s Palm Canyon. The groundwater will help them survive otherwise torturous summers when temperatures can soar over 120°F. As they mature, the palms support a wealth of desert wildlife, such as insects, birds, snakes, beneficial bats, roaming coyote, and an occasional bighorn stopping for a sip.
Near Palm Canyon, Beavertail Cactus (Opuntia basilaris) competes with annual wildflowers to attract pollinators.
Yellow Brittlebush (Encelia farinosa) lights up Palm Canyon as mountain shadows spread across the desert just before sunset.
Here is one of many flower species demanding closer inspection as it grows around the boulders. This one looks like Desert Rock Daisy (Perityle emoryi).
After a good rain, particularly in spring, the tall, spiny stems of Ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens) erupt with leaves and grow red flowers at their tips to attract hummingbirds and insects. This specimen towers over brittlebush and other wildflowers on the alluvial fan sprawling out of Palm Canyon.
Visitors on the trail leading into the canyon are warned that water and flowers attract more than people. Mountain lions, bighorn, rattlesnakes, coyote, and a host of other prey and predators might be found here. By now, you’ve noticed how yellow brittlebush flowers stand out in so many of our desert landscapes during April.
The resilient and storied desert pupfish earns its claim to fame on this informative sign near Palm Canyon.
Anza Borrego Park Rangers nurture this little pond and oasis that serves as home to a population of desert pupfish.
Short trails around Anza Borrego’s Visitors Center are designed to inform folks about the amazing variety of species occupying this desert. Blooming hedgehog and barrel cactus compete for space with yellow brittlebush on the left, adding to the wildflower celebration in this scene.
This appears to be Buckhorn Cholla (Cylindropuntia acanthocarpa) joining the spring flower party.
Chuparosa (Justicia californica) adds some red flare to an already chromatic desert wonderland.
This season stands out from previous drought years. The official NWS station recorded even higher totals: nearly 10 inches of rain. Also note the large diurnal temperature variation of roughly 30 degrees, which is typical of dry desert air masses during spring. By July, the daily spread can be between 120 and 90, while temperatures can plunge below freezing on winter nights.
Prehistoric Ice Age Mammals? Known as the Sky Art Metal Sculptures in Borrego Springs, you will find these exhibits created by Ricardo Breceda on the Galleta Meadows Estate. Though vehicles have trampled the surface around the exhibits, plenty of wildflowers could be found in the sandy desert nearby.
Fossil records indicate that sloths such as these roamed this region when it was a much wetter savanna environment starting more than 2 million years ago until the last glacial period. As the baby sloth uses mom for a free ride, they are framed by this spring’s blooming Creosote (Larrea tridentate).
The author tries to break up this confrontation between fantastical desert giants. Passersby have trampled most annual wildflower seeds that dared to sprout in the compacted sand.
Desert Sand Verbena (Abronia villosa) puts on a spring show safely distant from vehicle tracks.
Desert Lily (Hesperocallis undulata) might be spotted in our hottest deserts after such exceptional rains. It grows from an edible bulb similar to garlic. It blooms here in this sandy, less disturbed soil.
These ocotillo sprout leaves and bloom above various other wildflowers in Desert Gardens. Notice how strong winds out of Coyote Canyon have sculpted them from left to right.
Winter storms delivered enough water on surrounding mountains to get water flowing through Coyote Canyon and across desert sands north of Borrego Springs. Running water choked with loose sediment sculpted these braided stream patterns into the wash before soaking into the permeable and porous sand. After sun and drought take control again, nature’s artistic carvings will remain as memories of a wet winter and spring.
I found a clump of Desert Thornapple (Datura discolor) in the sandy wash spreading out of Coyote Canyon, surrounded by other wildflowers. It is an annual common to the Sonoran Desert. Clueless recreational users tempted by its hallucinogenic alkaloids are often fatally poisoned.
A little precious water changes everything in this brutal desert terrain. As summer approaches, surface water will retreat up into Coyote Canyon and other Anza Borrego Canyons, leaving the desert floor to bake. Most flowers will disappear as plants struggle to survive through one more sizzling summer.
Each desert species must adapt or perish.
The graphs illustrate how winter temperatures will drop below freezing around the Anza Borrego Desert, and then soar above 120°F by midsummer, under a punishing sun. Meager precipitation might get a secondary uptick during the July-September monsoon season that can spill over from the Sonoran Desert. But, such isolated and violent summer showers and thunderstorms often result in dramatic, localized flash floods and debris flows that disappear within hours. Plants and animals are challenged by every extreme in every season.
Anza Borrego Desert is home to more than 70 species of snakes, lizards, and amphibians. This nonvenomous Red Racer or Coachwhip (Coluber (=Masticophis) flagellum piceus) was found resting in the shade on a hot spring day. They are active during the day and they are very fast, but pose no risk to humans.
We have traveled farther east of Borrego Springs and into Slot Canyon. Though most of the season’s rains didn’t make it this far east, we found a few spring surprises springing out of the sandy soil. For once, we’ll let you try to identify this species that must be resilient enough to grow and bloom in the absence of soaking rains.
Another isolated beauty erupted out of the dry wash at Slot Canyon. This looks like Hairy Desert Sunflower (Geraea canescens). There’s not so much competition for pollinators here, but there aren’t as many pollinators either.
We found this little desert pocket mouse hopping around Slot Canyon, looking for morsels. It seemed determined to gather what remains before the coming summer’s heat could burn away all hopes for survival. You think it is well camouflaged?
The Slot lives up to its name as it narrows through the Borrego Badlands. Find your imaginary character in the rocks. I found a face looking into the slot.
Relatively young, loose sediments here contrast with the narrows cut through the older, more resistant red rocks of canyon country around the four corners states. Still, let your imagination run wild, just as rare flash floods have run wild to carve these tapered gaps in the vulnerable desert badlands.
In a portion of the The Slot, large granitic rocks have been dislodged from the conglomerates that once encased them. After being liberated, they become larger debris that can only be moved during the rarest and greatest flash floods and debris flows. Few organisms can survive in such a hostile, unstable environment.
Still, a few plants have somehow managed to survive in these most extreme environments. This lonely desert lupine reminds us we are in the spring season.
Even in the harshest conditions, life emerges around the otherwise barren badlands and rock formations. A variety of insects may take advantage of an isolated brittlebush and its withering blossoms. There’s not much time to carry out your life cycle and propagate the species in an environment that can turn deadly within hours. These look like Desert Blister Beetles, AKA Master Blister Beetles (Lytta magister). Though they feed off brittlebush in spring, they can also bite. It looks like this courtship has led to mating, but the mating may continue for up to 24 hours! So, they often keep eating as they mate, from flower to flower. If you think that seems weird, consider some of those strange human behaviors.
The spotlight shines on this lone ocotillo near sunset. Since it responds to rains that soak the soil, Fouquieria Splendens can grow new leaves and flower a few times each year. But it usually springs forth in spring and this is no exception, even though this winter’s rains nurtured mountains to the west, mostly missing these eastern badlands. As the blistering spring-to-summer sun sucks out what little moisture remains, it will drop its leaves and wait, perhaps until the late summer monsoon slops up from the southeast. Or perhaps until next spring. Surviving in this desert requires a lot of patience.
Farther west, plants and animals in the Vallecito Mountains, just above and southwest of Borrego Valley, benefited from a nurturing wet winter. Here in the hills above Blair Valley, an assortment of desert species grows with the cholla and barrel cactus. We could understand why Willis Jepson, one of California’s first and most famous botanists, studied and recorded many species in this region.
At these higher elevations in the Vallecito Mountains above Anza Borrego, juniper woodlands look down on greener surfaces during this spring. This juniper tree is showing off its blueish berries and the surrounding landscape appears lush compared to the lower arid badlands to the east. For centuries, the Kumeyaay people harvested and ground ripe agave and juniper berries in their grinding stones, or morteros. Their artworks and artifacts are scattered across this region.
Desert Mistletoe (Phoradendron californicum) attaches to a variety of leguminous and other desert shrubs and trees, such as mesquite. It grows berries eaten by the flycatcher, phainopepla, which spreads the seeds after flying to the next host. Many Native Americans ate these berries when they ripened, but the plants are poisonous and can be fatal if ingested. The Cahuilla people boiled the seeds into a paste. Mistletoe extracts water and nutrients from its host, but it also carries out photosynthesis so that botanists consider it to be “hemiparasitic”. It has spread through the upper right sections of this tree.
A lone California fan palm stands out during April sunrise at Tamarisk Grove within Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.
Various cholla, ocotillo, and other desert species are illuminated by the pink sunrise on porous Anza Borrego Desert slopes during the spring of 2023.
This Westwide Drought Tracker map illustrates where the series of atmospheric rivers and other storms repeatedly swept west-to-east through California during the winter of 2023. Note the dramatic transition from western San Diego County, where some slopes received nearly double their average precipitation, to eastern San Diego County and Imperial County, where southeastern California remained drier than average. Plant communities in our deserts responded to these rain shadow extremes in dramatic fashion. We lifted this map from our previous Weather Whiplash story, where you can learn more about our wet winter weather patterns of 2023.
Now you can click on to Page 2 to explore the memorable April superbloom farther to the north, in our high desert.
