Bloom Reports from the Anza-Borrego Desert: 2024-2025
Table of Contents
Latest Summary of Bloom Status
Bloom Reports from Individual Hikes This Season
Links to Other Webpages on Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Blooms
Background Information for Bloom Reports from the Anza-Borrego Desert
Older Bloom Reports from 2009 to present
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| Fig. 1. Left: Encelia farinosa, brittlebush, observed by Tom Chester on 14 December 2024 in Hellhole Canyon. Brittlebush plants in the vast majority of ABDSP look like these. Right: A yellow variant of Justicia californica, chuparosa, observed by Tom Chester on 6 January 2025 in Rainbow Canyon Wash. Rainbow Canyon Wash is a rare exception to the "dry, dry, dry" of most places in ABDSP.
Click on the pix to go to the iNat obs of each, showing exactly where those photos were taken. | |
Latest Summary of Bloom Status
Summary as of 29 January 2025
Most of the Borrego Desert is still dry, dry, dry.
Unfortunately, Borrego Springs has set a weather record no one wanted to see. Borrego Springs, as measured at the official weather site used by the National Weather Service, has received no measurable rainfall at all since 6 April 2024. As of 29 January 2025, this streak is 297 days and counting, 9.7 months. This beat the previous longest dry period of 284 days from 18 February to 28 November 2009, according to NWS Forecaster Miguel Miller.
It is also the longest dry period, if one discounts daily rain totals of 0.10 inches or less. A daily rain of 0.10 inches or less is not very useful to plants in the desert since it evaporates quickly in the desert heat and low humidity. Ignoring daily rain of 0.10" or less, our streak is at 319 days and counting, 10.5 months, beginning on 16 March 2016, beating out the previous record streak of 284 days from 18 February through 28 November 2009.
Note that this is NOT true for other parts of ABDSP. Some places received fairly good monsoonal rain on 10 August 2024, and some places received a very minor amount of precipitation on 27-28 January 2025 (0.10 inches in Canebrake; 0.07 inches in Coyote Creek and Agua Caliente; 0.05 inches in Ocotillo Wells; and none at all in Borrego Springs at the Park gauge). Although those other areas therefore did not set a record for the longest dry period, those areas are still mostly dry, dry, dry.
The National Weather Service for San Diego has issued a Drought Information Statement for Southwest California showing that all of the Borrego Desert, and most of coastal and montane San Diego County, is now in "Extreme Drought", with a record driest start to the water year (since 1 October) for most areas. Precipitation has been under 20% of the average of the last 30 years.
Worse, Borrego Springs probably had its hottest summer on record. There were about 50 days in the summer with high temperatures of 110 to 121 degrees, far hotter than it used to be in the summer. The minimum temperatures at night often did not go below 90 degrees, giving the plants little or no recovery time from the daytime heat. So it is no surprise that in most places, the plants look to be near death. The Encelia farinosa, brittlebush, in Fig. 1 is typical of the vast majority of plants of that species.
But in some areas, especially in washes with deep sand that stores water, there are blooming plants that look good! Since 1 January 2025, there have been 104 iNat posts of 30 species in bloom. The numbers may be higher if you click on that link after 29 January. The most commonly posted species in bloom is Justicia californica, chuparosa, with 25 observations. All other observed blooming species have fewer than 12 posts.
In most areas, you are likely to see only a handful of plants in bloom, of just a few species.
The southern parts of the Borrego Desert, and the areas to the west of the desert floor, are in better shape. Although the monsoon season was nearly a total bust this year in the entire Southwestern U.S., we had one day, 10 August 2024, with fairly widespread thunderstorms. Good rainfall extended from the Ranchita area on the north, with 1.43 inches, to Agua Caliente on the south, with 0.85 inches. The town of Anza, to the north of Ranchita, received only 0.19 inches, so the rainfall did not extend much to the north of Ranchita.
One of the best areas for happy plants in that area is Rainbow Wash and the nearby Blair Valley area. The 10 August 2024 thunderstorm dropped a lot of rain there, that was not measured by any rain gauge since there are no rain gauges in the vicinity. The rain from that thunderstorm caused significant flow in the washes, with high water levels that ranged from a few inches to one foot deep, judging from the debris on plants in the washes. The plants looked happy on our 5 November 2024 trip there, and looked even better on 6 January 2025; see Fig. 1 for an example.
An even better spot with deep sand in early December 2024 was between Diablo Canyon and Fish Creek Wash. There have been no recent reports from there, and it looked like everything there was fading fast then. It also requires 40 minutes of driving on a wash road to get there.
You can explore the state of the bloom yourself from the comfort of home with the iNat 1,761 observations of 233 species, mostly non-blooming, posted at iNat since 1 January 2025 (numbers are as of 29 January 2025; your numbers will be greater as more obs are added from later dates). Click on "Filters" in the upper right to change the date range if you want to see only very recent observations.
Click on the "Map" tab at the link and you can zoom into the map to see where the reports are. Once you zoom into a given area, click on the "Redo search in map", or use the rectangular or circular area tool to circumscribe your area, to find out how many flower observations there are in your desired area. Each observation gives the date and time of observation, and the latitude and longitude for each observation, which is plotted on a map so you can see where it was observed (rare species have obscured coordinates, which have a different symbol on the map and wildly-inaccurate coordinates from the obscuration).
See also previous versions of this page.
Bloom Reports from Individual Hikes This Season
The latest bloom reports are given first (i.e., the reports are in inverse order of time). As detailed immediately above, you can see a map of where the hikes were from any linked iNat post of the species in bloom.
For many more bloom reports, see Anza-Borrego Wildflowers Bloom Report by Fred Melgert and Carla Hoegen.
Bloom Reports not yet added to this page
Links to Other Webpages on Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Blooms
Anza-Borrego Wildflowers Bloom Report by Fred Melgert and Carla Hoegen, often with daily wildflower updates.
All iNaturalist observations in the Borrego Desert since 1 December 2024, 774 observations of 198 species (numbers are as of 20 October 2024 (click on "Filters" to change the dates).
Wildflower Updates from the Anza-Borrego Desert Natural History Association.
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park official site, with wildflower information on it. When they start producing current wildflower reports, click on the link near the top with the word Update, which might be updated weekly.
DesertUSA Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Wildflower Reports
Anza-Borrego Foundation and Institute Wildflowers and their Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Wildflower Hotline: (760)767-4684. "Information on this recording is updated regularly."
Theodore Payne Wildflower Hotline (Reports begin the first Friday in March)