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By Paul Williams, Producer for The Green Planet

The first shoot for The Green Planet team happened in early 2019, and it was much more sudden than any of us had expected. I received an urgent call from desert scientist Ben Wilder at the University of Arizona. Ben had been monitoring satellite data of the weather over a remote desert in Northern Mexico - the Gran Desierto, and he had noticed that a rare hurricane had passed over the dunes. He was excited because the radar data suggested that this might have brought rain to the desert and ‘this might be enough’ he said ‘to trigger an extremely rare event’. It was one that Ben had been waiting a long time to study - a wild flower bloom. This could be the first in these dunes for decades.

Ben didn’t want to waste any time, but he was keen that we joined him. I did have reservations, particularly because this is a region of the Gran Desierto that is extremely remote and difficult to access, and I had no way of knowing what would be waiting for us once we made the arduous journey there. Even more concerning was that the chances of being in the dunes during such a narrow window of flowering was worryingly low. Nevertheless, knowing that this could be our only chance to capture such an event, we gathered our equipment in haste and headed to Arizona.

As soon as I and camera operator Oliver Mueller arrived, Ben and his team were waiting with a loaded truck. They impressed the urgency of the situation and explained how we were to drive over the Mexico border at first light and continue deep into the dunes. When dawn came however, a very different desert event was waiting for us… It was snowing in the Sonoran Desert! It was the heaviest snow Arizona had seen in two decades. Suddenly we were torn between filming desert snow in the United States and a wildflower bloom in Mexico.

Not wanting to pass on such an opportunity, Ben led us up a mountain in saguaro cactus country where we could film this rare event. It was the most bizarre winter wonderland I have ever experienced. Giant saguaro cactus draped in a thick blanket of snow, and the higher we went the more ominous the shapes of cacti appeared amongst the fog. Having only packed for the hot Gran Desierto, Oli and I faced the freezing conditions and filmed what we could, until by mid-afternoon the snow had turned to mush.

The next day all signs of snow were gone, and we were free to finally drive over the border to Mexico. It took a full day driving over giant sand dunes, from which we had to dig our truck out several times, until eventually we reached the place where Ben was certain the rain had fallen just a few weeks earlier. The sun was setting but the air was rich with the sweet scent of wildflowers - purple sand verbena and white evening primrose… the bloom was in full swing.

Over the next few days we were able to capture our second extremely rare desert event. A wild flower bloom. We returned to the exact location several times over the following two years to reveal how the lingering evidence, the dried dead plants, fade away… until all that remains are seeds in the sand.