How Big Will California’s 2023 ‘Super Bloom’ Be? What To Know

The last “super bloom” took place in 2019 and was the state’s most exceptional bloom in recent years. The natural phenomena prompted tens of thousands of residents and visitors alike to flock to areas like Walker Canyon in Riverside County’s Temescal Mountains and the Santa Monica Mountains in Los Angeles, where the bloom was so vibrant that it could be seen from miles away. In Northern California, super blooms are known to appear around Napa County, Folsom Lake, Mount Diablo State Park, Lake Tahoe, Pinnacles National Park, and North Table Mountain Ecological Reserve.

This year’s wildflower blooms are likely to peak in the early spring, lasting all the way through May. They aren’t expected to rival the super bloom conditions of 2019, but even smaller super blooms put on a spectacular display.

Expecting large crowds once again, state park and wildlife officials have learned a lesson from the super bloom four years ago.

With a 2023 “super bloom” likely, local municipalities near destination areas are proactively preparing to ensure that the chaos of 2019 does not happen again. Visitors eager for the perfect selfie amid the blooms, frequently trampled through them. The vehicle and foot traffic crushed the flowers, depriving bees, birds and other pollinators of their flowers.

In Riverside County, California poppies, the state flower, are already putting on a show. Lake Elsinore city officials said that Walker Canyon, a popular “super bloom” destination, will be closed to all visitors until further notice.

Lake Elsinore Mayor Natasha Johnson said that the safety of Lake Elsinore residents and the preservation of nature takes priority “over visitors’ desire to access the canyon and take photographs of wildflowers.”

While the phenomena was loved by many in 2019, the fluctuation of tourists visiting these “super bloom” destinations created chaos on freeways and threatened public safety.

That year the City of Elsinore took to Facebook to dub the influx of hundreds of thousands of visitors a nightmare.

“Tens of thousands of people, as many as 100,000 in a weekend, people of Disneyland-sized crowds, were seeking to experience nature,” Johnson told the SF Gate said on Tuesday. “They trampled the very habitat that they placed so high in regard and sought to enjoy.”

In Riverside County, residents hoping to hike among the flower-carpeted hills of Walker Canyon parked on the Interstate 15 freeway, flooded residential areas and trampled much of the bloom in the process when the wildflowers appeared in spring of 2019.

Four years later, and the “super bloom” is projected to return to Southern California. But how will it measure up to 2019?

Cameron Barrows, a conversation ecologist at the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of California Riverside shared with Newsweek that “the stage was set” for a vibrant “super bloom” in 2023 in some parts of California.

This projection comes after SoCal residents saw historic rainfalls sweeping across the region in late 2022 and early 2023.

“The result, so far, has been a patchy, good wildflower show, but not the extensive carpets of flowers we have seen during those exceptional wildflower blooms,” Barrows told Newsweek. “I was just out this morning in search of the best blooming areas. We found maybe a dozen or so species blooming, but not carpets.”

While the flowers have started blooming across SoCal, whether or not this year’s “super bloom” will measure up to 2019 will be determined by the amount of rain California gets in the coming weeks, botanist Naomi Fraga wrote for the Los Angeles Times.

According to her report, coastal Southern California regions reached 87 percent to 126 percent of their total average precipitation for the “water year,” or the period from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30 when hydrologists measure rain totals.

With the super bloom already starting, local officials in Riverside County are determined to keep the stomping visitors at bay, closing the popular Walker Canyon “super bloom” destination to all visitors until further notice.

The super bloom experience of 2019 was the principal motive for the decision to post “keep out” signs at the entrances of the canyon, Johnson, Lake Elsinore’s mayor said.

One Riverside County resident shared his photos of the wildflowers starting to bloom across the region’s hillside — and he was careful to follow the rules about admiring the orange blossoms from afar.

Joe Fanaselle took wildflower photos Thursday in Murrieta, Wildomar and Lake Elsinore.

He noted a presence of both Riverside County Sheriff’s deputies and a Riverside County Park Ranger patrolling Walker Canyon at Lake Street, where a sign closure was also put in place.

Patch staffers Toni McAllister, Ashley Ludwig contributed to this report.