By Flynn Demapendan
The Sahara Desert is known for its dry and barren landscapes, which barely receive rainfall every year. Although it is the world’s largest non-polar desert, it is still a guarantee for it to rain. But for the desert this year, it is not the case.
For two days in September, the Sahara Desert faced heavy rainfall in the southeast of Morocco after a low-pressure system was pushed across northwestern Sahara. From satellite data and photos, the Sahara Desert is shown to have large lakes that are etched into sand dunes after it experienced its first flood in decades.
The cause of the flood and rainfall is due to a form of an extratropical cyclone that went across the northwestern part of the Sahara and flooded the large treeless areas of Morocco, Algeria, and Libya. “While some degree of rainfall in this region happens every summer, what’s unique this year is the involvement of an extratropical cyclone,” said Mose Armon, a senior lecturer at the Institute of Earth Sciences and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Errachidia, which is a desert city in southeast Morocco, has recorded nearly 3 inches of rainfall, which is more than the average rainfall for the whole month of September. With the amount of rainfall the Sahara Desert currently has, it equals to more than half a year’s worth for the area.
Along with the flood, the water created a new terrain of watery landscapes alongside the palm trees and flora. “It’s been 30 to 50 years since we’ve had this much rain in such a short space of time,” Houssine Youabeb from Morocco’s meteorology agency told AP News.
With the rain falling and flooring sparsely-populated areas, some of the flood spread through Morocco’s towns and villages, causing deadly flooding, which resulted in more than a dozen deaths.
The Sahara Desert is the world’s largest desert, which spans 3.6 million square miles. Along with that, satellite imaging shows huge patches of the desert that are covered in green as the storms went more north. With it, some studies find the connection to climate change.
With the extreme flooding and rain in the Sahara, it is expected for more similar events to happen in the future due to fossil fuel pollution, which will cause the planet to heat up and will also disrupt the water cycle.
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