High Sierra Topix

Has anyone been down there or has a report? I'd like to see the site, but the reports I have been able to find are a bit nebulous.

This is the site that you want to monitor: http://theodorepayne.org/education/wildflower-hotline/
I have been waiting since the last great bloom, 6 years ago, but so far things are progressing slowly, 4-5 of us from HST are planning to meet up there, if conditions are similar to 2010.

Thanks a bunch.

Thanks for the link Mav, as this will help me as well. My parents and I are planning a quick stop at the Antelope Valley Preserve on the way back from the David Gilmour concert in a couple of weeks.

I drove the 58 through Carrizo a few years ago and it was not in bloom, was a little disappointed. Ikan Mas, I hope you get to time it well as it does look beautiful.

long shot (:

Carrizo RAWS site
mon 2016 2010 2005
Oct 0.00 0.36 2.84
Nov 0.00 0.18 0.00
Dec 0.43 2.45 2.13
Jan 3.18 4.05 2.41
Feb 0.08 2.75 1.98
Mar 1.34 0.35 1.18
------------------------------------
total 5.03 10.14 10.54 inches

long shot (:

Keep hope alive Dave.

During one spring CP received 3 or 4 inches of rain on the first couple days of April after a modest spring and then exploded so potentially it is already queued up unlike the previous 3 droughty winters. The 1.34 inches this last week or so is much more important than earlier months because this is when previously dormant germinated plants rise out of the ground and how they do so depends on available water around their small annual roots. There are some just posted images on desertusa.com wildflower reports that show expanses of wildflowers are rising right on the usual schedule at late March. Just not like in the epic years though because as shown on my precip post rains have been modest this winter.

I am likely to at least do a weekend down there in April even if not much more happens because there are some obscure areas with nice intimate landscapes and close-ups to work. Otherwise for anyone in the SF Bay Area I would highly recommend this week, Pacheco Pass State Park and adjacent San Luis Reservoir Wildlife Area that is very green with dense areas of wildflowers that I plan to return to myself before my road trip back to the desert. Wednesday thru Friday will be sunny with light breezes.

http://www.davidsenesac.com/2016_Trip_C ... les-0.html

David

A bit on/off topic, but does anyone know of or have any descent historic information on good years/bad years for flowers in Carrizo? 2005 and 2010 obviously qualify as good, but what about the remaining and/or prior years? 2011 seemed like a good year, though perhaps not as good as 2010 (?). Reason I ask is that given the weather data, with descent wildflower observations a computer model could in theory make a prediction as to the current season. For example (and for fun - yes, I do this sort of thing for fun) I pulled the rainfall data from RAWS and created a model for 2005-2015 - model suggests 2016 will be similar to the off-years as Dave mentioned...but the actual classification of good/bad years only goes back to 2005, is solely based upon 2005, 2010, and 2011 being good years, does not reflect when, and is binary (good/bad)

Several years ago after the Antelope Valley Poppy State Reserve recorded far more rainfall than normal, Milt Stark, the local expert and I both agreed on some enthusiast sites that there would likely be an excellent bloom. And then it turned out to be mediocre. Another area of that region to the northwest however had an excellent bloom. Each species is a bit different as to how they are affected by temperature, rainfall, dry periods, other plants like grasses already growing and so forth. And there are genetic issues like some seeds may have a more robust seed coat that takes more years to wear through before a seed might germinate even if it is soaked in water. Sometimes lots of species all bloom at the same time. Other years they are out of sync. And other years one blooms strongly while another species is nearly missing. Much we don't understand.

Thus trying to predict how the long list of species at Carrizo or any in any region will rise each spring is at best a vague experienced guess though indeed after the amount of seeds in the ground, it is true rainfall is arguable the next most important factor. What I do know is that monument arguably has the greatest seed bed of lots of species for any place on the continent which is saying a whole lot. And for that I very much thank President Clinton for making it a national monument despite the fact 95% of the time that huge area looks utterly dry and boring.

Before this Internet era there is a great deal about all manner of things that are permanently lost as generations of people pass away from the living. In the past we only had written books and papers that is comparatively miniscule versus what we are doing in the infant knee of the current era. Yea we live on the frontier of a new era of human beings. It is only now that we are beginning to store and save vast amounts of information. In a few decades machine intelligence is likely to far surpass what we are able to do now and with increasing science knowledge plugged into such machines it is likely they may even start to be able to decifer the complexities of such things as wildflower blooms.

Created a statistical model using data from Carrizo weather station and dated photos from flicker (to rank annual wildflower showings) - model predicts wildflowers this year to be ~8-9 on a scale of 1-10 (a 10 being similar to 2010). Math says one thing...only time will tell whether the wildflowers agree.