Cali super bloom about to be destroyed (video)

VICE News; Kelly Ani, Dhr. Seven, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly

If the cold doesn't wipe them out, the pounding rains and terrible winds will de-petal them, then the snow will squash them. Wildflowers currently in bloom do not stand a chance.

• Powerful winter storm to bring low elevation snow, heavy rain, [wind,] and frigid temps to Southern California
  

California, which is named after fictional Mexican Queen Calafia, is the most beautiful state in the nation, except perhaps for somewhere full of redwood trees in the Pacific Northwest.

Spring was in the air, the sun was out, temperatures were warming, then the chemtrails started and an arctic blast was reported. Overnight we'll go from balmy Hollywood tourist weather to Frost Belt normal. What is this, Chi Town, Nome, Buffalo?

• A huge winter storm is sweeping across the U.S., with 22 states under alerts (NPR)

Plants 'n flowers are alive and talking (Dr. Bose)

The flowers are brilliantly in bloom, particularly the gorgeous California poppy, that entheogenic poppy seed pusher used in heroin production, like our military milked in Afghanistan with their G.I.'s (government issues, human hamsters, cannon fodder, expendable assets).

The snow, falling as low as 500 feet, and pounding rain forecast for this week and the next ten days bodes ill for the flower community, other than Leo/Miley Cyrus' hit.

Our Mexican queen on Earth, Queen Calafia commemorated in Los Angeles.

Instagrammers are killing this field of wild poppies (HBO)

The California poppy is the Golden State's official flower, which makes morphine and heroin.

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Golden Mexican Queen Calafia

(VICE News) LANCASTER, Los Angeles, California - The Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve has a few rules: Don’t bring your dog to the park, don’t eat food along the trail, and don’t fly drones overhead.

The most important? Stay on the trail. But during this season’s super bloom [of wild desert flowers, mostly the California poppy state flower], a semi-rare outbreak of golden poppies in spring, staff at the reserve have had a difficult time making sure swarms of kids, families, and sexy models posing for Instagram follow along without trampling the delicate wildflowers.

On a typical day, the park sees about 60 visitors. During super bloom season that number skyrockets to around 2,000 per day.

Jean Rhyne, who has been an interpreter at the reserve for 13 years, has been vocal about the long-term impact this can have on the park’s natural wildlife.

“This park was created specifically because of the poppies that are here,” Rhyne told Vice News, “and if they get stepped on or sat on to take a picture in...it compacts the soil and then the roots from the seeds of the next year can't get in. So we'll have scars in the habitat for many years to come.”

Super blooms in California tend to occur about once a decade on average, depending on how heavy the rainfall and whether temperatures are favorable afterward, but this season is the second the reserve has seen in three years.

In 2017, there was what Rhyne calls the “Apopalypse,” when park staff first saw a significant and unexpected rise in visitors, most of whom were drawn there to promote their social media accounts.

Since then the reserve has tried to adapt, hiring staff from other California State Parks, providing numerous trails and walkways, and even using their hashtag #DontDoomTheBloom to inform people about the potential harm before they visit.

But this hasn’t deterred people from getting their perfect shot. Fewer than 300 Instagram posts have the #DontDoomTheBloom tag, while more than 147,000 are tagged #superbloom. And 45,000 have the hashtag #CaliforniaPoppies.

This year (2019) has also brought some unique problems. In March, a pair landed a helicopter in the middle of a field of poppies. When a park ranger approached the couple, they ran back to the helicopter and flew away.

The reserve responded to the incident in a since-deleted post on Facebook: “We never thought it would be explicitly necessary to state that it is illegal to land a helicopter in the middle of the fields and begin hiking off trail. We were wrong.”

Rhyne, on the other hand, was not surprised. “You just never know what's going to happen out here,” she said. “People do weird things.”

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