Recently in Southern California there has been an outburst of beautiful flowers growing across the country. This is due to the recent rainfall and the flower seeds that have been waiting to be planted around California. The main flower drawing attention are the California Poppies. Thousand of these beautiful orange flowers have been blooming in Lake Elsinore and surrounding areas recently.

Over this past weekend, Lake Elsinore had to close down Walker Canyon due to how many people showed up to take pictures. The crowds, over 150,000 people came out to see these flowers. Numbers like these is something that is out of Disneyland. These crowd sizes are extremely large for a city that only has 60,000 people living in it.

Numerous people are getting injured or trapped in mud due to the fact that these flowers are growing throughout the hills and not on trails. Tourists are walking off of the trails to capture the perfect picture, but this could end up being life threatening.

Why are flowers blooming so much this year? This is due to the massive rainfall California has received this year. Due to the rain, many of the seeds are being planted and are now sprouting. Some of these seeds have been laying around for years waiting for the right conditions to bloom. California has not seen this big of a bloom since 2017.

This outbreak of flowers has also caused many of the Monarch butterflies to migrate north. They are moving up the coast at a rapid rate and are loving the flowers. According to Riley Pietsch (10) she has seen so many butterflies around Yorba Linda. “They are so pretty and I love looking at them.”

So, why are people so attracted to these flowers to the point where they would spend hours in a line to take one photo. The main answer is to get the perfect Instagram photo. People are going out of their ways to get the perfect shot. According to Emily Remer (12), she “would totally go to take pictures at Lake Elsinore. In fact, [she] thinks [her] friends are going to go within the next few weeks.”

Overall, the super bloom this year is probably something that California will not see again for a while. If anyone is interested in taking pictures in the fields full of poppies go to Lake Elsinore, The Flower Fields in Carlsbad, and Descanso Gardens in Flintridge.