Portions of the Sahara desert are turning green

"Preliminary satellite analysis shows accumulations of many tens to more than 200 millimeters of rainfall in the areas affected—roughly equivalent to what the region receives in a year. The rainfall accumulation estimates are based on NASA’s IMERG (Integrated Multi-Satellite Retrievals for GPM) data, which is one of the only options for systematically assessing precipitation in the Sahara over broad areas because ground-based rain gauges and radar stations are so scarce.

“What’s also fascinating is that normally dry lakes in the Sahara are filling due to this event,” Armon added. Several of these lakes are visible in the image as dark blue areas, including one in Morocco’s Iriqui National Park (shown in detail within the inset circle).

Excerpted from the NASA Earth Observatory website, where you can pull the slider across the image to compare August and September.  The map embedded below is from Bloomberg.