The photographer Karim Bouchetata has captured, in recent weeks, a phenomenon that surprises many of us: the formation of snow in the largest hot desert on the planet.
But rest assured that the world is not ending – at least not yet. This is not the first time that the phenomenon has happened. The photographer had already gone viral for the first time in 2016, when he captured a Sahara blizzard after 37 years.
Since then, snow has formed more frequently, but it still leaves residents of the region excited. The phenomenon seen in parts of Algeria and Saudi Arabia impresses with the beautiful patterns that the snow has formed in the sand dunes.
The period of January tends to be of extreme temperature drops in the region – when the same place that usually reaches 50ºC in the summer is capable of reaching freezing temperatures -3ºC.
The city of Ain Sefra is more than 1000 meters above sea level in the Atlas Mountains, a mountain range located in the northwest of the African continent, which is why the cold is usually particularly intense at this time of year. Still, snow is a rare phenomenon, and even more so pictures. Even greater blizzards occurred in December 2016 and January 2018, but before that the last case noted was in 1979.
Reports in the media indicate that snow has also fallen in Lebanon, Syria and Iran – where some regions have been covered by a layer of snow up to one meter high. The phenomenon was caused by a polar jets that brought favorable conditions to the formation of snow in the middle of the desert.
The images are rare because, due to the temperature variation, during the day the heat melts the ice, preventing it to be common to see this phenomenon.
The Sahara is located in the north of the African continent. With an area of 9.2 million square kilometers, it covers several countries and is the largest hot desert in the world, stretching from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean.