Weather
On Sunday, snow fell in one of the most unlikely places on Earth, the world’s hottest desert. Ain Sefra, an Algerian town in the Sahara Desert, got a couple inches of fresh pow. It stayed on the dunes for 90mins before melting.
It was the third time in the last 40 years, and the second time in less than two years, that the desert has encountered snow. While the small Algerian town of Ain Sefra received a fleeting shower in December 2016 that created chaos across the area, the snowfall this North African town received this year (on January 7) is much deeper. While the town itself saw an inch or two, the sand dunes on its outskirts were blanketed by more than 16″ (40cm) snow. Prior to that, snow had not been in this region since February 18, 1979.
The rare snowfall reflects the trend of extreme weather events witnessed across the world in 2017. It also coincides with ‘bomb cyclone’, which has been hammering the East Coast of the US and Canada, dumping snow and ice in the least expected places such as Florida and Georgia.
16 inches! That’s almost as much as the total season accumulation of some Colorado ski resorts…
East Coast USA record cold
Alps buried in record snow – dry last year
Sahara in rare snow
West Coast USA low tide – buried last year