Sahara: images of rare floods in the desert which have not occurred for 50 years

Two days of heavy rain brought a rare deluge and exceeded annual rainfall averages in Morocco, leaving rarely seen images of the Sahara Desert.

The Sahara, which spans a dozen countries in North, Central and West Africa, is the largest hot desert in the world.

“It’s been 30 to 50 years since it rained this much in such a short time,” Houssine Youabeb, an official with Morocco’s meteorological agency, told the Associated Press.

Heavy rains in the Sahara Desert could lead to changes in weather conditions in the region over the coming months.

Southeastern Morocco is one of the driest places in the world and it rarely rains in late summer.

In Tagounite, a town 450 kilometers south of the capital Rabat, more than 100 millimeters of rain were recorded in 24 hours.

Meteorologists are calling the unusual rainfall an extratropical storm. When the air retains more moisture, it promotes evaporation and causes more thunderstorms, the Moroccan meteorological agency explained.

NASA satellite images show that a lake bed that has been dry for 50 years, between the town of Zagora and the town of Tata, is filling up.

According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), water cycles around the world are changing more frequently.

“As temperatures rise, the hydrological cycle has accelerated,” said Celeste Saulo, WMO Secretary-General.

“It has also become more erratic and unpredictable, and we are increasingly facing problems with water surpluses or shortages.”

With extreme weather events becoming more frequent due to global warming, scientists predict that similar storms could occur in the Sahara in the future.