Two satellite images of the same stretch of Western Australia, taken a year apart, show the difference a wet winter makes. On August 19, 2025, the Murchison region, about 600 kilometres north of Perth, is the rust-red of dry outback shrubland. On August 30, 2026, the same ground is green, covered in wildflowers in what local experts say may be the most impressive display in nearly 20 years.
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NASA’s Earth Observatory published the pair after Landsat 8 captured both scenes. The Murchison is better known for sheep and cattle grazing than for flowers, and the picture shows how quickly a dormant landscape can respond when rain finally arrives in volume.
Landsat 8 and the Murchison comparison
The images come from the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8, a joint NASA and U.S. Geological Survey satellite, and were processed by Lauren Dauphin of the Earth Observatory with a story by Lindsey Doermann. In the NASA write-up, Boom Year for Desert Blooms, the 2025 scene shows arid shrubland dominated by grasses, saltbush and slow-growing mulga trees, while the 2026 scene shows a green wash across the same area.
Among the flowers pictured in the NASA piece is mulla mulla, a Ptilotus species. The write-up credits the greening to wetter-than-normal months earlier in the year, and the satellite pair simply makes the contrast visible from orbit: the same ground, a year apart, in two very different states.
The assessment that this could be the best season in nearly two decades is a local one, not a satellite measurement. NASA attributes it to local experts, and the claim is hedged with “may be” in both the NASA write-up and the ScienceDaily version. CSIRO, which manages land in the region, gives a slightly different yardstick in its own article, described below.
The rain behind the bloom
The Bureau of Meteorology reported above-average rainfall in Western Australia in June 2026 and very much above average rainfall in August, driven by several cold fronts. Its August 2026 Western Australia summary gives the station figures for the Murchison district: Meekatharra Airport recorded 40.0 millimetres against an August average of 10.7 millimetres, and Mount Magnet recorded 53.2 millimetres against an average of 16.7.
The Mount Magnet total was a new highest August reading on record, beating the previous 52.6 millimetres from 1998. Murchison station itself received 41.2 millimetres against an average of 19.6, while Paynes Find, at 23.4 millimetres, was a little below its August average of 28.3. The rain was therefore heavy across much of the district but not uniform, which is worth remembering when reading a single satellite scene: the green in the 2026 image reflects a wet August that ran at roughly three to four times the usual total at two of the four stations, on top of an already wet June.
The same NASA page also notes the observatory’s place in the agency’s history. CSIRO’s Murriyang radio telescope at Parkes in New South Wales tracked Mariner 2 in 1962 and was an important receiving station for Apollo 11 in 1969, and the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, one of three sites in NASA’s Deep Space Network, is run by CSIRO. Both facilities supported the Artemis II mission in April 2026.
Seed banks and a radio-quiet observatory
Part of the bloom was recorded on the land of the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, known by its Wajarri name Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara. In a CSIRO article from September 16, land manager Andrew Whitmarsh said the soil’s seed bank “has come alive,” with seeds that had lain dormant for years germinating together. He described the season as a free-for-all with so many varieties blooming at the same time, and said he had not seen a display this good since 2008.
The site is a former pastoral property that CSIRO now manages for radio astronomy only. Radio infrastructure covers about 0.2% of it, and the rest is left to native vegetation. The observatory sits inside a radio quiet zone about 520 kilometres across, where licensed communications and electronic devices are controlled to protect the telescopes from interference.
Several threatened species flowered, including Calandrinia mirabilis, a striking pink species that the Western Australian Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions listed as Priority 1 until 2025, when it was moved to Priority 3 after more populations were documented on the site. Other species named in the CSIRO piece include purple mulla mulla near the ASKAP telescope, white pom pom flowers around one of ASKAP’s 36 dish antennas, and the red Swainsona formosa, called marluguru in the Wajarri language. Whitmarsh said he does not expect another season like this one next year, though he anticipates growing displays as the land changes. The ScienceDaily summary carries NASA’s imagery and the same local assessment.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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