News

El Nino Covers the Driest Place in the World with Pink Flowers

By Kanika Gupta | Update Date: Oct 30, 2015 11:21 AM EDT

This is perhaps the only time when a troublemaking weather condition like El Nino has a good side. In Chile's Atacama Desert, one of the most arid deserts in the world, a pink blanket of flowers can be seen covering the entire area as a result of El Nino. The warming of Central Pacific may be causing alarming situations such as drought and floods in many parts of the world, but this desert in the North of Chile has been covered with vibrant flowers of thousands of species that has never been seen in decades. A mix of purple, red, yellow and white has covered the barren landscape of Atacama where the normal temperature is nothing less than 40 degrees at this time of the year. Raul Cespedes, Desert Specialist at the University of Atacama says, "This year has been particularly special, because the amount of rainfall has made this perhaps the most spectacular of the past 40 or 50 years", reports The Times of India.

El Nino is a weather phenomenon that is affecting the patterns of climate in every two to seven years gave a hard time this year with unusually high rainfall in the driest part of the world. This is the reason why the flower bulbs and rhizomes that have been laying dormant for so many years, with stems that grow horizontally, have germinated. Cespedes said, "When you think of the desert, you think of total dryness, but there's a latent ecosystem here just waiting for certain conditions to arise," as reported by Washington Post.

The flowers started blooming in March after a devastating rainfall that caused intense floods in the area and killed 30 people. This is the second time in the year when these flowers are seen blooming, reports India Today.

© 2023 Counsel & Heal All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

Join the Conversation

Real Time Analytics