Winter

The Sahara Desert, Painted White With Snow

PHOTOS: The Sahara Desert, Painted White With Snow

"For a few fleeting hours Sunday, people perched in the arid heights of northwest Algeria caught sight of something rarely seen: the Sahara Desert, shrouded in white. Residents of Ain Sefra, a small town surrounded by the Atlas Mountains of Northern Africa, walked outside to find a dusting of snow underfoot β€” and more than a foot of it crowding the town's outer boundaries."

"While it's not unheard of β€” snow visited this landscape in December 2016, after all β€” the wintry weather is indeed rare for the region: As NPR's Maggie Penman pointed out at the time, the last major snowfall in Ain Sefra before that happened in 1979."