Weather
Skiers and snowboarders were met with orange-tinted snow in Sochi, Russia, this weekend.
The usually powdery white snow turned colors due to a sandstorm that blew across the Sahara Desert in North Africa in a phenomenon that happens only once or twice a decade.
It’s no wonder that so many spectators described the snow as Mars-like because very little white seemed to remain at all, giving the affected mountain ranges a distinctly sandy appearance.ย
The sandstorm made its way through Greece up to Russia and was so big that it could actually be seen via NASA satellite imagery.
The Athens Observatory said on Friday that this is one of the largest transfers of desert sand to Greece from the Sahara ever.
The African dust covered the entire country and concentrations were the highest in the last 10 years, according to the observatory’s meteorological service.
