Heaviest Rains in 2 Centuries Bring Life to Australian Desert

Australia’s Red Center is turning green.

After what was believed to have been the heaviest rains in two centuries, the sparsely populated desert heart of the world’s driest continent is coming to life.

Dormant plants, grasses and wildflowers will soon be blooming on the usually arid land, providing acres of food for the region’s resourceful animals, experts say.

Lake Eyre, a vast salt flat that lies below sea level about 500 miles north of Adelaide, is full of water for the first time since 1984 and can be expected to attract a wildlife spectacle.

Pelicans, ducks, cormorants and other species of birds will flock in by the thousands from coastal areas to breed at the lake, which could contain water for the next two or three years.

‘Desert Starting to Bloom’

“These rains are very, very significant for central Australia; the desert is starting to bloom,” said Pearce Dougherty, assistant district ranger at Leigh Creek, just south of Lake Eyre.

“The whole of the western part of the center should turn green. There is water everywhere; it’s very green and the scenery is going to be quite magnificent,” he told Reuters after an aerial inspection of the region.

Bill Kininmonth, a climate expert at the Bureau of Meteorology in Melbourne, said the past 12 months in Australia certainly were the wettest since Europeans settled on the continent 200 years ago.

Kininmonth said the deluge was the result of global wind changes that carried in extra moisture from the tropics.

Dougherty said seed germination and proliferation would be helped by the ground still being warm from a scorching summer. The onset of colder temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere would also mean the water would not evaporate so quickly.

Lakes, subterranean reservoirs and water holes would all be replenished, and most “ephemeral” vegetation should last well into next summer, he said.

This would provide good grazing for cattle in marginal farming areas, although it could also bring farmers a plague of rabbits, he said.

It rained for two weeks of March in the north of South Australia. Police said most roads north of the opal town of Coober Pedy, including the main road between Adelaide and Alice Springs, were impassable, and motorists were advised to avoid the area for seven days.

About 700 tourists were evacuated by train. No casualties were reported, but a police helicopter plucked 13 people from one flooded farm, a police spokesman said.

People who have lived in the area for many years believe the deluge, which dumped up to 12 inches of rain on some settlements, was the heaviest since the early 19th Century.