The rainy winter is offering Death Valley National Park visitors a rare experience — kayaking. Extreme rains and remnants from Hurricane Hilary in August have created a new lake in the hottest place on earth.
What we know about the lake in Death Valley National Park
It’s not the first time it’s happened. According to USA Today, “Lakes have appeared and disappeared in Death Valley for hundreds of thousands of years, leaving behind the park’s scenic terraced shorelines that bear testimony to the much wetter past of the driest place in North America.”
Weather experts don’t expect the current lake to stick around long, so if you are hoping to catch a glimpse, get there fast.
“It’s really beautiful at sunrise and sunset,” Elyscia Letterman, an interpretive ranger at the park, told USA Today. “It’s really magical to see the peaks reflected in the lake.”
The lake is located in the Badwater Basin, which sits 282 feet below sea level. There’s no drain in the region, since it typically gets fewer than 2 inches of rain per year, per CBS News. In the last six months, the park received 4.9 inches of rain.
“You might think with no drain to the sea, that Death Valley would always have a lake,” said park ranger Abby Wines in the news release, per CNN. “But this is an extremely rare event. Normally the amount of water flowing in is much less than the evaporation rate.”
How was the lake formed in Death Valley National Park?
It first filled up after Hurricane Hilary, but the atmospheric rivers hitting Southern California led to it filling back up this February.
The lake is informally called Lake Manly and stretches six miles long, three miles wide and one foot deep, CNN reported. Experts warn it might only be deep enough to kayak in for a couple weeks.
Death Valley does not provide kayaks, so you will need to bring your own gear.