What rangers called a once-in-a-decade wildflower “superbloom” in North America’s hottest, driest and lowest-elevation place has come and gone — another consequence of an intense, early heat wave in the American West.

“The superbloom is over,” Death Valley National Park ranger Nichole Andler said in a Wednesday interview. “The low-elevation areas, especially in the southern end of the park that in early spring were completely covered … that has passed because of the heat and the wind.”

The term superbloom is not scientific, and there’s no litmus test for what qualifies as one. The Amargosa Conservancy, an environmental group focused on preserving the Amargosa River that flows into the national park, sold shirts this year that declared: “All blooms are super.”

However, the National Park Service had declared 2026 a superbloom year sometime last month — the first since 2016. Other years that made the cut were 2005 and 1998, though visitors can find at least some wildflowers each spring.

Originally, experts had hoped the superbloom would stick around until April or even into early May.

In 2016, the superbloom year lasted longer, largely because it featured cooler temperatures and even more rain in February, Andler said.

Heat records broken

The heat in Death Valley this year has been intense — and record-breaking.

Since March 17, Death Valley has recorded a daily high temperature at 100 degrees or above. The all-time high March temperature is now 107 degrees, 3 degrees higher than the previous March record of 104 degrees set on March 26, 2022, said Andrew Gorelow, a meterologist at the National Weather Service’s Las Vegas office.

The highest monthly average for March was 75.1 degrees, set in 1957, and Gorelow said this month’s average is already at 79 degrees and growing. Death Valley has broken seven daily records in a row, with an eighth expected Wednesday if the high exceeds 101 degrees, he said.

According to climatologists from the independent group Climate Central, high temperatures in Death Valley have been made five times more likely because of climate change and carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

Don’t fret if plans already in motion

Some spots are still pretty impressive on the wildflower front in spite of the heat, Andler said.

“Death Valley is still Death Valley, and it has all of the cool hikes, the beautiful vistas and the adventures if you’re prepared for them,” the ranger said.

Daylight Pass, which visitors would pass on their way in from Beatty, strikes the right elevation to be a current hot spot for widlflowers, she said. Patchier clusters of wildflowers dot the roadways in from Pahrump and the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, as well.

Driving in from the west side of the park, other worthy stops are Panamint Springs and Towne Pass, Andler said. Jubilee Pass and Ashford Mill on the south side near Shoshone, California, were the epicenter of the superbloom this year, and are now seeing cactus blooms.

Andler said even though the heat has expedited wildflower life cycles, she has seen plenty of the annual plants reach the final seeding phase, including those in her front yard. This key phase sets the stage for many superblooms to come.

Contact Alan Halaly at ahalaly@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlanHalaly on X.