The Sahara Desert flooded for the first time in decades. This is what it looks like

(CNN) – The striking images of sahara desert show large lakes carved into rolling sand dunes after one of the most arid and barren places in the world suffered its first floods in decades.

The Sahara does receive rain, but usually only a few centimeters a year and rarely in late summer. However, for two days in September, heavy rain fell in parts of the desert in southeastern Morocco, after a low pressure system moved across the northwest of the Sahara.

Preliminary NASA satellite data showed almost 20 centimeters of rain in some parts of the region.

Errachidia, a desert town in southeastern Morocco, recorded almost 7 centimeters of rain, the most in just two days last month. That is more than four times the normal rainfall for the entire month of September and is equivalent to more than half a year for this area.

“It’s been between 30 and 50 years since we had so much rain in such a short time,” Houssine Youabeb of Morocco’s meteorological agency told the AP last week.

As the rain fell on the desert terrain, it created a new aquatic landscape among the palm trees and shrubby flora.

Some of the most notable images are those of the desert city of Merzouga, where the rare flood excavated new lakes in the sand dunes.

Reflections of the city’s palm trees now shine over the expanse of a new lagoon framed by steep sand dunes.

The rain also filled lakes that are normally dry, such as one in Iriqui National Park, Morocco’s largest national park. NASA satellite images of the region, which use false colors to better highlight flood waters, show newly formed lakes in swaths of the northwestern Sahara.

A false-color satellite image from NASA shows parts of the Sahara Desert in Morocco and Algeria on August 14, 2024. The second image shows the same area on September 10, 2024, with the lake in Iriqui National Park, visible in dark blue at the bottom left.

While much of the rain fell in remote, sparsely populated areas, some fell in towns and cities across Morocco, causing deadly flooding last month in which more than a dozen people died.

The Sahara is the largest non-polar desert in the world, with an area of ​​9.2 million square kilometers. Satellite images from September showed huge stretches of desert covered in green as storms moved further north than usual, a phenomenon that some studies have linked to human-caused climate change.

More extreme rainfall events could be expected in the Sahara in the future, as fossil fuel pollution continues to warm the planet and disrupt the water cycle, according to recent research.

CNN’s Brandon Miller contributed to this report.