In 2018, the Sahara Desert, the hottest place on earth received snow, much to the surprise of the locals as well as people around the world. Locals were stunned to wake up to a blanket of dense snow settling in their small town of Ain Sefra, popularly known as the ‘gateway of the desert.’ It actually snowed here for the fourth time in nearly 40 years.
As per reports, more than 15 inches (40 cm) of snow blanketed the sand dunes across this small town. Although snowfall is a rare phenomenon in such a hot place, a similar thing happened even last year. Sahara, being one of the hottest and driest places on earth, where the temperature reaches 122 degrees, witnessing snowfall is actually a rarity. The reason associated with the snowfall in this region is because of cold air aloft associated with a surface storm drifting from Spain to northern Algeria.
As per Meteorologist Jason Nicholls, “The cold pool of air coupled with precipitation from the surface storm led to precipitation falling as snow instead of rain. The same feature responsible for the snow over the Sahara brought the heavy snow to the Alps earlier this week.”
Scientists are, however, not attributing this rare snowfall event to climate change as extreme weather conditions might become more of a common thing in the future, as well as the climate changes.
Study reveals that the Sahara Desert covers most of Northern Africa and has gone through shifts in moisture and temperature over the past few thousand years. Actually, even though Sahara weather is too dry today, it is expected to become greener in around 15,000 years.
