Stunning satellite image reveals historic snowfall over the Sahara Desert as seen from space

Three days ago, the Sahara Desert was blanketed in snow for the second time in living memory. It had been 37 years since the last time this rare event occurred, and by the next day, it had all disappeared. But, a breathtaking natural-color image from the Landsat 7 satellite shows a new look at the remarkable snowfall, revealing what the ‘thin veil’ over the desert looked like from space. Stunning images of the event in the Algerian town of Ain Sefra were first shared by amateur photographer Karim Bouchetata. The last recorded snowfall in this region, sometime referred to as the ‘gateway to the desert’ was in February 1979. A new view, revealed by NASA’s Earth Observatory, shows the scene captured by the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus on the Landsat 7 satellite. It shows the snow blanketing an area in North Africa on December 19, focusing on a region near the border of Morocco and Algeria, south of the city of Bouarfa and southwest of Ain Sefra. In this region, summertime temperatures typically average 37°Celsius (99°Fahrenheit) – but in the wintertime, it’s been known to occasionally drop down to the single digits Celsius (30s Fahrenheit). But, the area experiences just a few centimetres of precipitation over the course of the entire year, making moisture in the air just as rare as cool temperatures. The space agency has also revealed images from December observations over the past four years, showing the striking difference of the 2016 event. These were captured with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instruments on NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites, rendered in false-color to blend infrared, shortwave infrared, and visible red wavelengths. In these photos, snow is shown in bright blue-green. Bouchetata shared a series of breathtaking photos to Facebook on Monday, capturing the amazing moment snow fell on the red sand dunes in the world's largest hot desert. | DailyMail

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