India, Oct. 1 -- Spring has arrived in the Southern Hemisphere, bringing an unlikely transformation to one of the world's driest places: Chile's Atacama Desert is bursting into bloom.

The normally rocky, brown landscape has been covered by millions of wildflowers after unusually heavy rains earlier this year triggered the sprouting of seeds and bulbs that had remained dormant, in some cases, for decades.

Known as the driest nonpolar desert on Earth, the Atacama stretches about 1,600 kilometres (1,000 miles) along northern Chile between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes Mountains.

Although flowers appear in the desert during some winter-to-spring transitions, this year's Desierto Florido, or "flowering desert", is expected to be unusually...