Supplementing the previous post about the extreme rain and resulting flooding in the eastern Mediterranean i also prepared an image from the other side of the sea at the north African coast in Libya, where the same storm that caused the flooding in Greece also lead to extraordinarily intense rainfall and flooding a few days later.

Most of the damage and fatalities due to the flooding happened at the coast in the north in the steep and narrow valleys, indirectly visible in this image mostly due to the sediment carried by the streams in these valleys into the sea and coloring it.

More impressive in this picture is, however, the extensive flooding in the desert further south. In general the flatland regions of much of northern Africa have been very dry during the past few thousand years compared to the long term average before. The more humid long term history of northern Africa is still well visible in many places in the form of valleys shaped by water flow and extensive lakes which are permanently dry in more recent history. In a way the flooding we can observe now in the desert of northeastern Libya gives us a bit of an idea of how the conditions might have been in the Sahara desert thousands of years ago.