Lakes were formed in the Sahara after heavy rains

Science: Satellite images show that Cyclone Hurricane brought heavy rains to North Africa, soaking a large part of Earth’s hottest desert. An extratropical cyclone moved across parts of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya on Sept. 7 and 8, dropping about 8 inches (20 centimeters) of rain in the affected areas — the equivalent of an entire year’s worth of rain in just a few days, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory.

Flooding and runoff filled many ephemeral lakes in the Sahara, including several lakes around Sebkha el Melah and Erg Chebbi in Algeria — a vast expanse of dunes dotting the Sahara in Morocco. NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite also captured several ephemeral lakes visible across parts of Morocco and Algeria. The Erg Chebbi lakes filled when rivers from the nearby Atlas Mountains overflowed near Merzouga, a town near the Algerian border that serves as a gateway to the Star Dunes. An image captured on October 1 by one of the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites shows new lakes scattered around the edges of Erg Chebbi.