This is the best summary I could come up with:

Thanks to the record-setting rain that has washed over California during the last six months, Lake Manly — which dried up thousands of years ago — has reformed on the floor of Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America.

At the same time, it is delighting visitors, park rangers and the scientists who have devoted their careers to studying Death Valley and have called the lake’s reappearance one of the most spectacular natural phenomena they have ever witnessed.

The fleetingness has fed something of a frenzy at a park that is not typically among the country’s most visited, stirring a run on kayaks at the nearest sporting goods stores and attracting visitors from thousands of miles away.

By the time the lake’s eventual namesake, explorer William Manly, arrived in Death Valley and rescued stranded pioneers during the gold rush of 1849, the water in Badwater Basin was long gone.

While Death Valley eventually became widely accepted as one of the country’s true natural wonders, there is now a sense among those who revere the park that Lake Manly’s encore performance is reintroducing the place to a new generation of visitors.

For scientists like Naomi Fraga, the director of conservation programs at the California Botanic Garden 30 miles east of Los Angeles, this sudden swing has felt like whiplash.

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