Ancient Death Valley Lake Reappears

Lake Manly, a pluvial lake, is visible in dark blue in the center of this Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 (HLS) false-color corrected reflectance image of the Badwater Basin in Death Valley National Park, California. The HLS image was captured on Dec. 10, 2025, by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) aboard the Landsat 8 platform.

Death Valley has experienced the wettest fall on record, as 2.41 inches of rain fell between September and November, which is more than what the area typically gets in a year. The record rainfall has caused several inches of water to accumulate.

The comparison above shows Nov. 7, 2025, on the left and Dec. 10 on the right, showing the accumulation of rain in the ancient lake bed. Swipe the center bar left and right to see the lake emerge in the Dec. 10 image.

The false color reflectance (Bands 7-5-4, Shortwave Infrared) imagery layer reveals how much water is present in plants and soils, as water absorbs in shortwave infrared wavelengths. This imagery layer can be used to distinguish between cloud types like water clouds versus ice clouds, snow, and ice, which appear white. Vegetation is in shades of green, soils and urban areas are in shades of brown, and water is dark blue/black. Freshly burned areas appear red.

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