This year's wildflower super bloom display in Southern California is so breathtaking, it's drawing too many visitors.
Faced with traffic jams, crushed flowers and overflowing public toilets, authorities temporarily closed access to Walker Canyon to the swarms of tourists who'd flocked there to take the perfect Instagram picture of those bright orange poppies. It has since reopened, but parking is extremely limited, authorities said .
So, why not contemplate this astounding natural show from the comfort of your sofa, with an all-encompassing view of the outbreak of orange from space?
The WorldView-2 satellite, owned by DigitalGlobe, took amazing photos on March 19 of the hillsides along Walker Canyon covered in blooming poppies.
One shot shows a long line of cars along the roads leading to the Walker Canyon trailhead.
Zooming in, it is possible to see people walking along the trail.
Not quite captured by the lens, though, are the painted lady butterflies that have swarmed California deserts during this year's super bloom, making their way north from Mexico.
At the peak of the migration, the butterflies could fly by at a rate of one per second, according to Art Shapiro, a professor at the University of California, Davis, who's been studying the migration of butterflies in the state since 1972.
