Hold on to your hats because the Sahara Desert—yes, the driest desert in the world—just got hit with a flood. No, this isn’t a scene from a sci-fi movie; it actually happened.
According to Al Jazeera on October 14, 2024, Morocco experienced its heaviest rainfall in decades this September. We’re talking about torrential rain for two straight days in a place that’s not exactly known for getting wet.
In the village of Rabat in southeastern Morocco, rainfall reached a whopping 101.6 millimeters in a single day—definitely a record-breaker. Normally, this area sees less than 254 millimeters of rain in an entire year. But not this time. This storm didn’t just bring a little drizzle; it flooded the desert and even created pop-up oases.
And get this—Lake Iriqui, a lake that’s been dry for 50 years, was suddenly filled to the brim, so much so that you could see it from NASA satellite images. Let that sink in.
The storm followed six straight years of drought, which made the sudden flood even more jaw-dropping. Houssine Youabeb, from Morocco’s General Directorate of Meteorology, said it’s been 30 to 50 years since they saw rain like this in such a short period of time. And this isn’t just a one-off event; it’s expected to have long-lasting effects on the weather in Morocco because all that extra moisture in the air is sticking around.
The good news? All that rain has rapidly filled up reservoirs, providing much-needed water to the region. The bad news? The storm also took a deadly toll, claiming 20 lives in Morocco and Algeria and causing some serious damage to crop production.
Meteorologists are calling it an extratropical storm, which basically means it could shift weather patterns for months or even years. Because the air is holding more moisture now, we could be looking at even more storms down the road. Yay?
While this rare flood could help replenish groundwater and aquifers that desert communities rely on, experts aren’t ready to say how much it’ll help ease the ongoing drought just yet. But for now, the Sahara is enjoying its moment as a water wonderland—however temporary that might be.