Death Valley sees its most spectacular superbloom in a decade

Death Valley has come back to life.

A stunning bloom of wildflowers painted the normally arid landscape of Death Valley National Park – one of the most extreme places on Earth and the hottest, driest place in North America – in pretty hues of pink, purple and yellow.

“This region, known primarily for its warm climate, sand and dirt, has become a stunning landscape of color,” said David Blacker, executive director of the nonprofit Death Valley Natural History Association. “The smell is just amazing.”

This year’s superbloom is the most spectacular Death Valley has seen in a decade, according to the National Park Service. This is the result of wetter than normal conditions across the region last fall and early winter.

Abby Wines, acting deputy superintendent of Death Valley National Park, said that on average, Death Valley typically only gets about 2 inches of rain each year.

“From November to early January, we had about two and a half inches of rain, so we had more than our annual average in just two and a half months,” she said.

Wines said some wildflowers typically emerge in the park each spring, but superblooms (although it’s not an official botanical term) only occur after particularly wet fall and winter seasons.

The most widespread flowers – those that can be seen at lower elevations almost everywhere in the park – also need the “right” kind of rain, according to Blacker.

“We need several days of drizzle, fog and gentle rain that penetrates, but not the heavy monsoon rains that wash out our highways and destroy our roads,” he said. “And then we need mild temperatures in spring, because once the flowers appear, their big enemy is wind and heat.”

The types of wildflowers that bloom in the desert are called ephemerals. Unlike cacti, which store water to survive in hot, arid environments, these flowers can exist for long periods as seeds in the soil.

“You can think of this as an escape from drought,” said Erik Rakestraw, curator of botany at the Arizona-Sonoran Desert Museum in Tucson. “In seed form, it’s like they don’t even exist. They just settle into the ground.”

Under the right conditions, the seeds will germinate. Then, once the flowers are pollinated, they will become seeds again and the cycle will begin again.

“If there’s no good rain next year, or even the year after that, or several years in a row, these seeds have evolved to just wait and wait,” Rakestraw said.

For anyone hoping to catch this year’s stunning bloom, time is running out.

Wines said wildflowers at lower elevations should only persist until mid-to-late March. At higher elevations, flowers should appear between April and June. But both of those timeline estimates depend heavily on the weather, she added.

Blacker said reaching some of his favorite places to see wildflowers requires a hike, but most visitors will be able to see flowers all along Badwater Road, especially on the south end. For less populated viewpoints, he recommended Mud Canyon or along Beatty Cutoff Road.

Blacker maintains a wildflower report on the Death Valley Natural History Association website with updates on where the flowers peak. The National Park Service website also has information for those tracking the progress of wildflowers.

Wines said she has noticed an increase in visitors to the park in recent days and weeks and encouraged anyone hoping to see the wildflowers to make the trip.

“The next few weeks will be peak bloom,” Wines said. “By the time the higher elevations are blooming, there will be lots of flowers and they will be beautiful, but they will be interspersed with bushes and plants, and it won’t create the same visually stunning landscape that you can see now at lower elevations, where a rocky landscape has transformed into a field of wildflowers.”

Picking the park’s wildflowers is prohibited, she added, asking all seekers of beautiful flowers to be careful to protect the region’s pristine environments.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com