The worlds hottest desert, the Sahara, to the shock of many, saw snowfall. This makes it only the second time in the last 4 decades and the 3rd time in living memory.
Photographers took incredible pictures of 18-inch deep snow covering the sand in the small North African desert town of Ain Sefra after freak winter storm’s on Sunday.
The town saw snow this time but prior to that there had not been snow there for 37 years and the residents were surprised to see snow falling on the red, sandy dunes.
This has come at a time the northern hemisphere is seeing record cold temperatures.
Karim Bouchetata a photographer said: “We were really surprised when we woke up to see snow again. It stayed all day on Sunday and began melting at around 5pm.”
Last year, A town, known as “The Gateway to the Desert,” saw disruptive snow after Christmas and it caused a lot of problems with travellers getting stranded on buses after the roads became slippery and icy.
Children played in the snow made snowmen and even sledged on the sand dunes.
the last time snow was seen in Ain Sefra was on February 18, 1979, and it only lasted half an hour.
A spokesman for the Met Office stated “Cold air was pulled down south into North Africa over the weekend as a result of high pressure over Europe.
Ain Sefra is around 1,000 metres above sea level and surrounded by the Atlas Mountains.”
The Sahara Desert covers most of Northern Africa and it has gone through fluctuations in climate over the past few hundred thousand years but it is it is expected to become green again in about 15,000 years.