A string of storms this fall left Death Valley doing what it rarely does: collecting rainwater.
The National Weather Service says this was the wettest fall on record for the park — September through November totaled 2.41 inches — and November itself set a new mark at 1.76 inches, topping the old November record of 1.70 inches from 1923. That’s more rain than the valley typically sees in a year, and at Badwater Basin — 282 feet below sea level — the runoff pooled into a shallow, walkable lake people are calling Lake Manly. It’s small and shoe-top shallow in most spots, much less dramatic than the lake that followed Hurricane Hilary in 2024, and it sits about a mile from the Badwater parking lot. The storms hit hard: sections of pavement were buried or scoured away after the November 15 storm, and more rain on November 18 produced additional flooding and closures.
A stubborn storm parked over Death Valley on November 15, 2025, and the desert didn’t know what hit it: Furnace Creek recorded 0.6 inches of rain — a number that’s more than a quarter of the park’s usual annual total. In terrain that sheds water off bedrock and washes it down into narrow canyons, that half-inch-plus didn’t soak in; it ran hard and fast, turning arroyo channels into destructive flows of mud, rock, and debris that have chewed up road shoulders and left pavement buried or gone.
