Badwater basin, within Death Valley National Park, is a dried up lake entirely coated with … table salt! It’s the lowest point in the United States and is also the hottest place in the United States. The area gets about 1.9 inches of rain annually but the evaporation potential is 150 inches a year so the water dries up quickly and it never turns back into a lake.
However, recently it got a years worth of rain in just one day and has created enough standing water to create a temporary lake inside the basin. It’s going to dry up again soon.
We got to experience it this weekend! It gets doubly bright here as the sunlight and radiation is reflected off the salt floor and really affects the eyes in a way similar to how snow blindness works. Kaleb and Kabir refused to wear sunglasses and you can see them struggling to look at the camera in this pic. We had other sun protection with us so they weren’t exposed for too long.
It’s surreal to see a standing lake here. There were even some folks canoeing!