Shower of snow dusts the Sahara

While the Eastern United States was hunkering down in an exceptionally cold Arctic blast this past weekend, another part of the world, much less familiar with winter, had similar weather on Monday — the Sahara Desert.

The freak snow shower coated the giant sandy dunes of the Sahara, known first and foremost with its deadly, suffocating heat.

The closest town, Ain Sefra, Algeria, hadn’t seen snow in nearly 40 years until it happened for the first time this century in 2017.

Even more odd, now, is the fact that it snowed two years in a row.

In 1979, a similar snow storm lasted around 30 minutes.

The winter storms in Algeria are short. The area has a seeringly-hot average high temperature of 38C in the summer.

But, like many deserts, it gets kind of chilly in the winter, especially at night.

The average December high temperature is only around 10C.

Interestingly, the cold air that enabled this snow to fall came from the same cold-air outbreak in the Eastern US in late December.

Due simply to winds that below from west to east, the air over the US eventually winds up in northern Africa.

Even so, it’s strange to see a winter weather warning for Algeria posted on Facebook.

Meteo Algerie was predicting around 10 to 15cm of snow in the provinces of Naama and El Bayadh.

The Algerian weather service called it “special”.