New ephemeral water bodies in the Death Valley National Park

In August 2023, California was hit by the Hilary tropical storm. It brought torrential rain to Death Valley National Park, which received a year's worth of rainfall in a single day.

The rains transformed the region, replenishing basins that had been dry for nearly two decades. The Badwater Basin is one of these, shown in these two Copernicus Sentinel-2 images. In the image acquired on 6 August, the basin was empty, but in the image acquired on 20 October (two months after Hilary's passage), it continued to hold its newfound water.

The Copernicus Sentinel satellites provide valuable data to identify and delineate the extent of flooded areas when heavy rainfall occurs and to monitor water bodies globally.