Chile | Unusual rains bring flowers to the arid Atacama Desert

(Copiapó) The Chilean Atacama Desert, the driest on the planet, has been adorned with purple and white flowers over several kilometers, thanks to unusual rainfall in this region in the north of the country.

The phenomenon, which had not been observed at this time of year since 2015, surprised tourists and residents of nearby towns, who in recent years have become accustomed to admiring this natural spectacle from September onwards.

“The 11-12 millimeters of rain [tombés en avril]”, as well as the low clouds that have been very intense in the region and that wet these surfaces every night, have helped to activate these plants,” explained to AFP César Pizarro, head of biodiversity conservation at the National Forestry Office of Chile.

The expert points out, however, that this phenomenon has nothing to do with the so-called “flowering desert” that occurs in the Northern Hemisphere in spring. Because this landscape usually extends over an area of ​​about 15,000 km². But today, flowers appear over a much smaller area, of the order of 300 to 400 km².

And when the “flowering desert” is at its peak, more than 200 species of plants are in bloom. Today, the main protagonist is the “guanaco leg”, a purple flower that requires practically no water and prefers sandy sites.

Although the magnitude of this early desert flowering “anomaly” is still being analyzed, scientists have not yet determined whether “what happened in the winters of 2015 and 2024 is directly related to climate change or not, or to El Niño or La Niña phenomena,” Pizarro adds.