Earth from space: Blooming California

Captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission on 8 April 2023, this image shows Los Angeles and part of the hinterland in Southern California.

The sprawling metropolitan area of Los Angeles, the second most populated in the United States, can be seen in shades of gray in the lower part of the image.

The city of San Bernardino lies around 100 km east of Los Angeles. Several water bodies can be identified in dark blue to the south of San Bernardino, except for Lake Elsinore which appears light green in the bottom right of the image, most likely due to a high concentration of algae in the water.

At the northern city limits, the vegetated areas of the Angeles and San Bernardino National Forests are visible at the foothills of the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains, which run across the center of the image. Mount San Antonio, the highest peak at 3068 m, as well as the surrounding peaks are covered with snow.

The Mojave Desert dominates the upper part of the image. Center-pivot irrigation fields stand out as circular green shapes, which contrast with the surrounding landscape. Most of them are concentrated in the top left of the image, near the cities of Lancaster and Palmdale.

After years of sustained drought, California has recently experienced record-breaking winter precipitation that triggered a flower “superbloom” event in the area.

Blooming fields are so large that they can also be spotted from space. The vibrant orange and yellow colors of poppies and wildflowers in bloom can be seen throughout the image, with the most noticeable in Antelope Valley, west of Lancaster, and in Walker Canyon, north of Lake Elsinore.