El Niño rains spark massive flower bloom across Chile's Atacama Desert
Unusually heavy El Niño rains have awakened dormant seeds, covering large parts of the Atacama Desert with purple and white blossoms.
Heavy rains associated with the strongest El Niño episode in four decades have transformed Chile's Atacama Desert, one of the planet's driest places, into a carpet of purple and white flowers. Seeds and bulbs of roughly 200 species, long dormant underground, have germinated after receiving more than 180 mm of rain in some locations, a level never recorded before. César Pizarro, head of biodiversity at the National Forestry Corporation (Conaf), noted that water has seeped deeper than usual, encouraging vegetation to emerge even in a nature reserve about 800 km north of Santiago.
Conaf forecasts that the flowering will peak in October and could cover around 15,000 hectares. The spectacular display is drawing large numbers of tourists and photographers, while the same rains earlier in July caused at least 13 deaths and damaged or destroyed roughly 4,000 homes.
