An ancient lake that thrived during the last Ice Age has reemerged in California’s Death Valley National Park, after a record spell of rainfall hit the area, the National Park Service said.
Informally known as “Lake Manly,” the shallow body of water formed at the base of the park’s Badwater Basin. At 282 feet below sea level, it’s the lowest point in North America.
The basin began to collect rainwater as Death Valley saw repeated storms between September and November of this year, eventually creating a superficial lake. According to the park service, the lake is smaller and shallower than one that formed last year in the same location, when the remains of Hurricane Hilary passed through it. In that instance, water levels were briefly high enough for people to kayak.
But this time, levels in most parts of the lake would not rise above the tops of a person’s shoes, the agency said. It has pooled in a spot about one mile from the Badwater Basin parking lot, so visitors can still see it, barring temporary weather-related closures in place due to flooding.
Savannah M. Sanford/NPS
This year, fall storms brought more rainwater to Death Valley in two months than the area normally receives over the course of a full calendar year, the park service said. Rainfall measurements taken in the park showed that the area saw 2.41 inches of rain during the fall season, from September through November, marking Death Valley’s wettest fall on record, according to the National Weather Service’s forecast office in Las Vegas. (The Nevada city, which is not far from Death Valley, also experienced its second-wettest fall in recorded history this year, the forecast office said.)
Storms hit Death Valley particularly hard in November, according to the park service. The agency said rainfall measurements in the valley reached 1.76 inches that month, breaking the previous November rainfall record for the area, which was set in 1923 at 1.7 inches.
How old is Lake Manly?
Although Lake Manly now disappears and reappears from time to time, it was once a massive body of water that filled Death Valley, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory. When ice covered the Sierra Nevada mountain range that bookends the western side of the valley, between 128,000 and 186,000 years ago, rivers flowed down to it from the mountains and fed into Lake Manly.
Savannah M. Sanford/NPS
Back then, Lake Manly was enormous, spreading across Death Valley for nearly 100 miles with depths of up to 600 feet, according to NASA. Over time, the lake dried up as the climate warmed and the ice melted, although it left behind salty remnants of its prehistoric lake bed.
In modern times, glimpses of Lake Manly are relatively rare, returning only when Death Valley receives enough precipitation to cover the miles of old salt flats that are typically visible at Badwater Basin and instead produce a fleeting reservoir. In one of the hottest and driest places on Earth, it does not happen very often.
In August 2023, Death Valley was inundated with 2.20 inches of rain in a single day, breaking a rainfall record.
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