Sometimes in spring, if all meteorologic conditions are right, California’s dry, harsh deserts erupt in so many wildflowers that they’re visible from space. This phenomenon is known as a superbloom, which is not a scientific term but a now-common descriptor for an event that you will know when you see it. Here are thick, expansive blankets of yellow, orange, purple, blue, and white—colors you wouldn’t plant in the same garden but that nature gloriously throws together.
In the past, Californians could expect these flower explosions about once a decade, but now, like everything else, superblooms are a bit erratic and a lot more intense.
This article appears in Issue 30 of Alta Journal.
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To make a superbloom, you need a succession of dry years that allow the wildflower seeds to collect and remain undisturbed. Then you need an autumn rain substantial enough to reach them but not strong enough to wash them away. After that, our young wildflowers require a few months of gentle warmth and low winds that don’t send them flying.
But when a superbloom happens, it happens. From March to May, the floral wave crashes across the state from San Diego to Redding. You want to touch it, possess it, roll around in it. All that beauty makes even the least frolicsome among us want to frolic.
Which leads to the superbloom’s biggest threat: Instagram. The first major bloom of the social media era, 2017’s Flowergeddon, near Borrego Springs, was notable for persistent sprays of influencers wandering off-trail to get the perfect shot, trampling precious flowers in the process. Then came 2019’s Poppy Apocalypse, when a crowd of 150,000 so overwhelmed Lake Elsinore’s Walker Canyon that it’s still closed.
The most recent superbloom was in 2023, but it’s hard to predict when or whether we’ll get another. These floral flash mobs seem to come when we need them the most, as if nature is saying, “Sorry about that pandemic—go take a hike” or “Ugh, David Bowie died—maybe this will help.” With all that these bloomers have to survive in a given year—droughts, heat waves, atmospheric rivers, fires, invasive plants, and invasive people—it’s no wonder 2024’s superbloom was a lot less super. The flowers were exhausted too.•
Stacey Grenrock Woods is a regular contributor to Esquire and a former correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. She writes and consults on various TV shows, and has a recurring role as Tricia Thoon on Fox’s Arrested Development. Her first book is I, California.
