“Sometimes when things are falling apart, they may actually be falling into place.” — J. Lynn

Passing a critical eye across desert landscapes, at the lowest elevations we see a possible future for much of our desert. Dry, rocky slopes and otherwise common plants without any recruitment, just scattered aging brittlebushes and creosote bushes, and fewer of those each year. Our community scientists have documented these changes, being most pronounced on the drier eastern end of the Santa Rosa Mountains. Each year fewer plants and fewer lizards on a one-way path to oblivion.

Then, perhaps catalyzed by the same global climate change processes that have given us almost two decades of unprecedented heat and drought, Hurricane Hilary moved up and across Baja California and between the hurricane and a monsoon cell a week later, it dumped five inches of rain south of Palm Desert at the Boyd Deep Canyon Desert Research Station. The La Quinta cove received even more, more than three and a half inches from Hilary and another four or more inches from the monsoon. More than two and a half years of average rainfall in two weeks, more rain than 2020, 2021, and 2022 combined. Hurricanes and monsoons impacting our desert are not unprecedented, but warming oceans are predicted to spawn more frequent, and larger storms in the years to come. As happens with hurricanes, there was flooding, road closures and property damage. Most of the homes in the La Quinta Cove survived pretty well; unfortunately, we lost a stately palo verde tree, over 30’ tall and more than two feet in diameter at its base that shaded most of the south side of our home. The storms simply pulled it out of the ground.

Given the power and volume of rain delivered by these storms, I wondered about the impacts to the surrounding desert, to those lower elevation mountain slopes, already so stressed by decades of heat and drought. What I found along the Bear Creek Oasis trail was a pleasant surprise. The remaining brittlebushes were fully leafed out, some even in bloom. The creosote bushes were covered in rich dark green leaves, along with fuzzy white fruits, evidencing that they had been in full bloom just a few weeks before. The surprise was that between these mature shrubs there were thousands of seedlings of both species, seedlings that had been absent from these slopes for many years. If, as predicted, the growing El Niño’s warmer sea temperatures brings with it even close to average winter rainfall, those seedlings will be able to stretch their roots deep below the surface, enough to find pockets of damp earth that will ensure their survival through next summer’s inevitable heat. The slopes were littered with dead ocotillo, plants that had succumbed to those years of drought and the lack of substantive summer rain. Ocotillo especially like summer rain; their distribution in our local mountains maps the distribution of expected summer rain, explaining why they are absent from the San Jacinto Mountains, and become increasingly abundant on the eastern and southern slopes of the Santa Rosa Mountains. The ocotillo that survived those decades of sparse summer rains were now in full leaf, with many in full bloom and with Costa’s hummingbirds making sure each blossom was pollinated and new seeds will be available to sprout new ocotillo when the conditions are right.

Another surprise was that there were many species of small perennial shrubs and annual plants present and in bloom, some of which otherwise only show their self and colorful blooms after ample winter rain. Nevertheless, here they were. Desert rock hibiscuses were in full bloom as was their distant relative, a single, five-foot-tall Newberry’s velvet-mallow, a species otherwise found south into Baja California and like ocotillo, dependent on summer rain. After over three decades of hiking this trail, this was the first time I had seen species this far north. Also new for me were carpets of a couple of summer rain-loving native annual grasses, Bouteloua aristidoides and Aristida adscensionis.

To see if this botanical bounty could be found elsewhere, our band of community scientists next hiked upper Carrizo Canyon, off of Highway 74. We were not disappointed. Surface water was flowing at 4-5 locations along the canyon floor, a phenomenon I had not seen there before. At each wet spot there were a dozen to many dozen inch long red-spotted toads. Apparently add water to a dry desert canyon bottom and miraculously tiny amphibians appear. How their parents survived for so many dry years, to then wake from what must have been a deep sleep, to then become re-hydrated, breed and produce this cornucopia of toadlets is a miracle in itself. Similar to the Bear Creek trail and canyons, there were blooming ocotillo, very “happy” creosote bushes, and wildflowers sprinkled throughout the canyon bottom, along with luxuriantly blooming California fuchsia lining the canyon edges. Three very plump-looking banded rock lizards were sunning themselves as we hiked by. Our community scientists’ next stop was the Lost Palms Oasis trail, just east of the Cottonwood visitor center in Joshua Tree National Park. Here again, luxuriant ocotillo, creosote bushes, and a similar sprinkling of annual wildflowers, species that would otherwise be expected to show themselves in March. Also, lots of lizards.

What nature showed us was, unlike the impacts to humans and their infrastructure, hurricanes in the desert can stimulate a “rescue event,” re-setting an entire ecosystem back to a healthier state. In contrast to my gloomy opening paragraph, suggesting our desert species are a path to oblivion, nature showed us that species inhabiting our deserts are resilient, extinctions are not inevitable, and that we still have time.

Nullius in verba

Go outside, tip your hat to a chuckwalla (and a cactus), think like a mountain, and be safe.