In the north of Algeria, in the middle of the Sahara desert, it is currently called "sledding well-being". Snow in the Sahara is a very rare phenomenon.

The town of Ain Séfra is sometimes referred to as the Sahara Gate. Behind him, endless dunes of brick-red sand begin. Sahara is the warmest desert in the world. The temperature here is usually around 37 ° C to 40 ° C in summer, but it is minus 10 ° C in winter. However, rainfall is rare here, so it rarely falls in the summer and snow does not normally fall in winter. But recently people could see an extraordinary phenomenon: the brick-red sand dunes in front of the north of the Sahara were covered by a thick layer of snow overnight.

On January 7, 2018, an unusual winter storm covered the red sand dunes around the desert town of Ain Séfra with white snow. In the early morning hours of Sunday, up to 40 centimeters of snow fell in some surrounding areas. In the city of Ain Séfra itself, about 5 centimeters of snow fell.

Cold Mountain Areas

Snow in the hot desert is an unusual phenomenon. Only three cases of snowfall can be found in the Ain Séfera records: 1979, in the winter of 2016/17 and now. However, experts point out that it may snow again in the Sahara: "Every 3 to 4 years we record in the higher Sahara regions", says meteorologist Andreas Friedrich of the German Meteorological Service in Offenbach.

Reason: In the Sahara there are mountains more than 3.000 meters high. The higher we rise above sea level, the more the temperature drops, so it can be very cold in winter.

Humidity came with a pressure drop from the Mediterranean

Ain Séfra lies about 1000 meters above sea level on the edge of the Atlas Mountains. In winter it freezes very often here. With low pressure, colder air masses from higher latitudes arrived in North Africa, which were saturated with water vapor on their way across the Mediterranean. So this humid air mass, unusual for the Sahara, could penetrate the region and the moisture fell on the dunes like snow. In the meantime, however, the snow disappeared again after 17 pm on the same day.