
Snow in the Sahara - okket
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/world/africa/snow-sahara.html
======
iFred
Well ackchyually,

While it isn't a week-to-week winter norm, it isn't all that too unusual from
a long term perspective. There are snows and frosts every year across the
region, with heavy low altitude snows every few years. The area is fairly dry,
and low dew points make it pretty easy to keep the place cool and the regions
covered in snow are the same latitude as northern Texas and even higher in
elevation.

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Jugurtha
I live in Algeria. There's yearly snow in a lot of places in the north
(mountain chains, [http://bit.ly/2ErueEU](http://bit.ly/2ErueEU)) and we hear
about snow in the desert.. It's when it snows in Algiers that everyone goes
nuts, especially when there's snow on the beach.

To give an idea why: it's winter here at 17°C/62°F and everybody complains all
the time about how cold it is, including my sister _as I am typing this_.

~~~
FuckOffNeemo
I live in Australia, in the South East sub-tropical Queensland state.
Originally from the UK and I complain about it being too cold in winter when
it gets to 15 degrees.

10 years ago I would have been running to the beach in the UK at anything
above 12. How times have changed.

~~~
Jugurtha
> 10 years ago I would have been running to the beach in the UK at anything
> above 12.

I often joke "a Brit would swim at that temperature." when someone complains
about the cold. Turns out I was spot on the money.

Here: [https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2010/sep/04/algiers-
city-...](https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2010/sep/04/algiers-city-break-
algeria)

~~~
FuckOffNeemo
100% on the money.

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patkai
"15 inches" \- none of the photos I've seen show more than 15 mm.

~~~
dovdovdov
15 inches horizontally...

~~~
fermienrico
Go to reddit please

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yread
Apparently it happens quite often, and record low is -10 degrees Celsius

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aïn_Séfra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aïn_Séfra)

~~~
dagw
4th time in 37 years for this part of the Sahara according to original
article.

~~~
nanis
Tree falls in the forest etc etc ...

“The Sahara is as large as the United States, and there are very few weather
stations,” he added. “So it’s ridiculous to say that this is the first,
second, third time it snowed, as nobody would know how many times it has
snowed in the past unless they were there.”

"Not observed by a human" does not mean "did not happen". Humans measured
things where humans lived or traveled during almost all of their existence.
E.g., see Giarabub[1].

The methods we have today of inferring past events from remaining physical
indicators tend to mash together decades to hundreds of years of events.

One must keep these things in mind.

[1]:
[http://climate.unur.com/ghcn-v2/124/62176.html](http://climate.unur.com/ghcn-v2/124/62176.html)

~~~
dagw
And that is why I/they specified that we where talking about this particular
corner of the Sahara, not the whole desert.

------
kbutler
The Snopes take on it is worthwhile and adds more context about previous
snowfalls:

On 21 January 2017, flurries from dawn until late afternoon left most of the
area blanketed in snow...A month before that, there was a brief flurry of snow
lasting only a couple of hours...

snow was documented over the desert in the Bechar region near Aïn Séfra in
January 2012...

Before 2012, the most recent significant Saharan [sic] in this region appears
to have occurred in February 1979, though it bears mentioning that a lack of
social media and widespread digital cameras during these years would have made
a light dusting far less global a news story.

[https://www.snopes.com/sahara-desert-
snowfall/](https://www.snopes.com/sahara-desert-snowfall/)

------
jvandonsel
I can't be the only one who noticed the similarity to the planet in The Last
Jedi.

[https://fsmedia.imgix.net/b8/50/91/5c/de5d/4948/8e51/fdf72b2...](https://fsmedia.imgix.net/b8/50/91/5c/de5d/4948/8e51/fdf72b24dcdb/screen-
shot-2017-04-17-at-51527-pmpng.png?rect=0%2C0%2C955%2C318&auto=format%2Ccompress&w=650)

~~~
dfee
Maybe we’re all just characters in a movie the Galactic Empire is producing?

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Tepix
Does anyone have more pretty pictures of this event? It looks gorgeous!

~~~
jdmitch
the linked article in french from an Algerian website has more pictures:
[https://www.tsa-algerie.com/la-neige-tombe-a-ain-sefra-
pour-...](https://www.tsa-algerie.com/la-neige-tombe-a-ain-sefra-pour-
la-4e-fois-en-37-ans-photos/) and the link to the page of the photographer who
took most of them:
[https://www.facebook.com/kbouchetata](https://www.facebook.com/kbouchetata)

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hanief
It reminds me of a nice song with a similar title :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpj3ra3AeJk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpj3ra3AeJk)

~~~
fiftyacorn
Was expecting "Do they know its christmas"

~~~
Bromskloss
"…or do we have to dump snow over the Sahara for them to get it?!"

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Vaskerville
I lived in Mauritania for five and half years and on two occasions a friend
saw snow flurries in northern areas of the country. It's probably more common
than we know.

~~~
ogre_magi
My brain turned Mauritania into Marijuana.

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neonate
[http://archive.is/qaoXy](http://archive.is/qaoXy)

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ianai
So global climate change is going to further dry out the southwest US and make
the Sahara more wet?

~~~
sp332
Yup. Here's an article from 2009
[https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-gree...](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-
sahara.html)

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skykooler
It reminds me of the salt planet in the new Star Wars movie.

