The Sahara Desert was flooded for the first time in decades. This is what it looks like

(CNN) – Stunning images from the Sahara Desert show large lakes carved into rolling sand dunes after one of the world’s driest and barren places was hit by its first floods in decades.

It does rain in the Sahara, but usually only a few centimeters a year and rarely in late summer. However, heavy rain fell on parts of the desert in southeastern Morocco on two days in September after a low pressure system spread across the northwestern Sahara.

Preliminary NASA satellite data showed nearly 20 cm of rain fell in some parts of the region.

Errachidia, a desert town in southeastern Morocco, recorded nearly 3 inches of rainfall last month, most of it in just two days. That’s more than four times the normal amount of precipitation for the entire month of September and is equivalent to more than half a year’s worth of precipitation in this area.

“It has been 30 to 50 years since we had so much rain in such a short period of time,” Houssine Youabeb of the Moroccan Meteorological Agency told the AP last week.

As the rain flowed over the desert area, it created a new, watery landscape amidst palm trees and bush plants.

Some of the most dramatic images come from the desert town of Merzouga, where rare flooding has carved new lakes into the sand dunes.

The reflections of the city’s palm trees now shimmer across the surface of a new lagoon, framed by steep sand dunes.

The rain also filled lakes that are normally dry, such as one in Iriqui National Park, Morocco’s largest national park. NASA satellite images of the region, which use false color to better highlight the flooding, show newly formed lakes in parts of the northwestern Sahara.

While much of the rain fell on sparsely populated, remote areas, some also fell on Morocco’s towns and villages, causing deadly floods last month that killed more than a dozen people.

The Sahara is the largest non-polar desert in the world, covering 3.6 million square miles. Satellite images from September showed much of it covered in a carpet of green as storms pushed further north than usual, a phenomenon some studies have linked to human-caused climate change.

Recent research suggests more extreme rainfall is expected in the Sahara in the future as fossil fuel pollution continues to heat the planet and disrupt the water cycle.

CNN’s Brandon Miller contributed to this report.