© EFE The Atacama desert has had heavy rains - resulting in a gorgeous carpet of pink flowers
The Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on Earth, is experiencing a riot of color as a rare springtime bloom of flowers covers every hillside.
The explosion of color is the result of rains that swept through the region earlier this year,
watering seeds that had lain dormant in the ground for years.
The
Atacama Desert typically gets just 0.6 inches (15 millimeters) a year in rainfall, though some places in the region, such as Arica, receive even less, experiencing between 0.04 and 0.12 inches (1 and 3 mm) of rain a year. [
See photos of the beautiful blooms in the Atacama Desert]
Most of the time, the desert is an otherworldly, forbidding landscape of steep, rocky hillsides, salt lakes and old lava flows. However, this year, the heaviest rains in two decades hit the region, causing mudslides and overflowing rivers that killed 28 people. In one day in March alone, the town of Antofagasta, Chile was battered with 0.9 inches (23 mm) of rain, the equivalent of seven years of precipitation, turning the entire town into a river of mud,
according to The Weather Channel.
Those rare winter rains also watered the parched landscape, nourishing flower seeds that had been buried in the ground for years. The result? A dazzling carpet of pinks, oranges, yellows and purples as far as the eye can see.
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