On December 19, snow fell on the edge of the Sahara Desert, covering the red dunes of white for the first time in 37 years.
The world got to know the event thanks to the amateur photographer Karim Bouchetata, who posted his photos of the city of Ain Sefra (Algeria) on Facebook.
Ain Sefra is located between the Atlas Mountains and the North Sahara Desert Border, about 1000 m above sea level, and is known as the "Desert Gate."
"Everyone was impressed by seeing the snow on the desert. It's a very rare event, "said Bouchetata. "The snow, however, has lasted very little, has melted only in a day."
Snow is not a rare event in Africa, although we are not used to its presence. Mount Kilimanjaro (Tanzania) is hooded by a layer of perennial snow, while in Oukaimeden, located 72 km from Marrakech on the Atlas Mountains, lies the highest skiing slope in the African continent (3200 m).
But in the desert the situation is quite different, since the last snowfall dates back to 1979!
The photos released by NASA's Earth Observatory are really cool: in particular, an authentic color photo taken from the Landsat 7 satellite shows perfectly the presence of snow on the border between Morocco and Algeria, southwest of Ain Sefra.
Other NASA False Pictures show the area of ??the Saharan Atlas Mountains in December in the last 4 years; Taken from the Aqua and Earth satellites, the infrared photos portray the snow in a bright blue-green.
