Death Valley Strangely About To Become A Flowery Paradise

Death Valley, California looked anything
but dead in this photo of the last super
 bloom in 2016. It looks like Death
Valley is on the verge of a new 
super bloom.  Photo from Wildlife
Trekking/Facebook.

Work with me here, but I really wish I was in Death Valley now.

I know, I know . Why would I want to go to a ridiculously hot place that's barren, sandy, rocky and sometimes dangerous? 

The reason to go is a relatively rare super bloom of flowers that is just beginning to blossom into desert gorgeousness.    Since my big perennial beds in Vermont are buried beneath a foot of snow and are frozen rock solid, you can understand my reasoning. I desperately need winter flower therapy. 

Death Valley super blooms come maybe once in a decade. Park rangers there say there was one in 2016 and another in 2005. It was a pretty good flower year in 2024, but last year was pretty colorless amid drought and early season heat. 

Though a few flowers and interesting plants sprouts every year in February and March, this year's Death Valley Dream looks like it might be spectacular.  

To be Captain Obvious, Death Valley doesn't get a lot of rain. To get a super bloom, you need some heavy showers that come just at the right time.    The best time for that is late autumn or very early winter. 

This past November was soggy by Death Valley standards. They got 1.76 inches of rain, compared to normal of just 0.10. 

Next, you need warm weather. Temperatures have been above normal in the region over much of the winter. 

A cool spell is moving in to Death Valley, but it won't be enough to harm any plants. Plus, some more showers are likely daily today through Tuesday night. 

After this latest bout of rain, temperatures look like they'll start to warm up again in the desert, with temperatures maybe reaching close to 80 in about a week and a half. 

So it looks good. 

Super blooms go fast, as the desert designs plants so that they quickly sprout from seeds, produce flowers, then convert those flowers to a lot more seeds for next time. This will all happen well before summer, for good reason, Death Valley is the hottest place on earth. Summertime temperatures regularly go into the 110s and 120s,   . 

The best time to see the blooms is now through early April.  Wonderful flowers last into May in higher elevations. You can find some great flowers and plants as late as July way up high around 8,000 feet or higher. But who wants to climb a steep desert mountain when the temperatures is higher than the hot chocolate or coffee you're drinking as you read this.

Alas, I won't be going out to Death Valley for this year's super  bloom. But I hope other people do, and post what they see on line for the world to see.

VIDEO

That last Death Valley Super Bloom was in 2016.  Associated Press video walks you through how it looked like. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that.

Snow (Temporarily) Rebuilding In Vermont Mountains; Flurried To Death Elsewhere

After a sunny day, traffic cams show a snow squall
hitting Interstate 89 in Williston shortly before 6 p.m.
It was brief, but left areas of black ice behind. 
Same situation could well happen in parts of
Vermont today. 

Vermont weather on Friday was certainly windy, with a wait a minute it will change character.  

So stereotypical of March, so there you go. Winds gusted as high as 63 mph at a  fairly  high elevation in Jay. Elsewhere, we had reports of 53 mph in Lowell, 51 mph on Colchester Reef and in Springfield and 49 mph in Alburgh and West Rutland. 

Almost everybody saw top winds in the 40 mph range. The gusts were enough to produce some power outages. The number of homes and businesses without power Friday peaked at around 2,400 shortly before 2 p.m. Friday. 

Also true to March character was the weather. It was bright and sunny in much of Vermont for a good chunk of midday. Then, as expected, those briefly sorta heavy, gusty hit and miss snow showers rolled in. 

I noticed Burlington got a quick. 0.7 inches of accumulation in a brief burst of snow late Friday afternoon. Traffic web cams showed highways in parts of Chittenden County getting iffy. There were quite a few reports of black ice, and a few slide offs and car  mishaps.   

NEXT UP

More of the same this weekend as a spray of small disturbances blow through from the west and northwest.

Snow prediction map from the National Weather Service
office in South Burlington through Monday morning.
Most of us won't get much, but some areas of the
northern Green Mountains, New York's Adirondacks
and New Hampshire's White Mountains could get
 a  decent six inches of snow out of this. 

None of these disturbances will be capable of bringing much snow. But it will add up in the central and northern Green Mountains, where a fresh four to seven inches should be on the ground in those high elevations by Monday morning. 

One of these little weather disturbances was putting down some snow showers mostly across  central Vermont early this morning. 

As of 6 a.m., it was snowing again a little in Burlington, though skies were clear overhead here in St. Albans. The hit and miss character of these snow showers continues. 

Judging from the traffic cameras, you might well encounter areas of snow covered roads and black ice this morning.  I'd take a little extra time getting to where  you are going early today because of this. 

Looks like new snow overnight ranges from less than an inch in the valleys to at least a couple inches in some of the mountains. 

Another hiccup in the wind flow overhead will bring central and northern Vermont another smattering of gusty snow showers this afternoon and evening. 

Much like Friday's snow showers, these will be hit and miss, and a few of them might contain very briefly heavy snow and gusty winds. Just enough to make it a little dicey on the road if you drive into one.

Today will stay windy, though not as bad as Friday. But it will be colder, with most places staying at or below freezing all day. 

After maybe a little sun Sunday morning, the next little weather thingy comes in from the west and northwest.  This will have a slightly better, more organized packet of snow showers with it.  Still, it will be light stuff. Most of us will see yet another dusting to two inches, with a little more in the mountains. 

SPRING, WITH INTERRUPTIONS

It'll start to warm up on Monday, and Tuesday should give us a brief treat of springtime temperatures. Many of us will see some sun and highs up in the low 50s.  Very nice!

Yesterday, I thought there'd be a little cold air oozing into northern Vermont Wednesday and maybe missing the south. 

Now it looks like that cold front from Quebec will blast on southward through the state, giving us a brief return to chilly conditions Wednesday. 

Then, it looks like a large storm will blossom somewhere in the central Plains next weekend. As it stands now, it looks like that storm will pump the warmest air of the spring so far into our region.  Early hint suggest it's even possible the warmer towns could reach 60 degrees in a little over a week.

Will be interesting to see if that comes to pass. As usual, spring will be coming to Vermont in reluctant fits and starts. 

Tis The Season For Winter/Summer Hybrid (Thundery??) Weather In Vermont

Blue skies made a welcome appearance over my St.
Albans, Vermont gardens this morning. But the
sunshine that accompanies the breaks in the 
clouds will lead to scatters showers and rumbles
of thunder this afternoon and evening.

 In the winter, when a pool of cold air settles in aloft, thousands of feet above us, we get the drudgery we see in the depths of the cold season.   

In means overcast skies, cold weather, wind chills, snow showers and just general ick. 

Now that we're well into spring, we can still get those cold pools of air high overhead. Sure, when that happens in the spring, it gets chilly. But we also get hints of summer. 

Goodbye, thick overcast. Hello to scattered showers, even thunderstorms, and if you're "lucky," small hail. That's what we seem destined to see today.

The strong spring sunshine can cut through the clouds, allowing for breaks of sun to develop. That sun heats the ground pretty quickly. Then we get updrafts, which create those tall billowy clouds that we often see in the summer. 

Those tall clouds turn into showers, occasionally accompanied by a rumble of thunder or two.

Billowing shower clouds rise over my St. Albans,
Vermont gardens back in April, 2021 in a 
weather pattern that's very much similar to today's.

The dense fog that was around early this morning was burning off by 8 a.m. or so in much of the region. That was revealing areas of blue skies. 

The sun will heat the ground, and we'll see some of those tall clouds. 

These cold pools of air aloft are really storm systems in higher levels of the atmosphere. Little disturbances, which are basically mini-cold fronts, come through from time to time under these weather patterns.

It these mini-cold fronts are timed right, they can help develop these showers and storms. That will probably happen today as well. 

As we expect in the summer, the showers and isolated rumbles of thunder will be hit and miss. Some places might miss out entirely. Most of us probably won't even hear thunder. 

Unlike what we often see in the summer, today's storms and showers will not be severe. 

The few places that get bullseyed by the strongest of today's storms might hear a couple rumbles of thunder, experience a brief downpour, possibly mixed with a few pea-sized hail stones and wind gusts in the 20 to 30 mph range. Fun for weather geeks, but definitely nothing to panic over.

It'll sort of be rinse and repeat tomorrow, though the showers won't be as numerous during the day as they will today. They'll also be weaker and stand little chance of producing thunder or brief downpours.