One of Earth’s Driest Places Was Just Covered in Snow
Two recent storms brought snow from the Andes to the Pacific coast, and ALMA entered protective survival mode, officials said.
- NASA satellites captured rare snowfall across the Atacama Desert in northern Chile following two storms occurring just days apart in late August, with snow cover stretching from the Andes Mountains toward the Pacific coast.
- A stronger El Niño system in the Pacific shifted storm tracks closer to Chile, while a cutoff low separated from the jet stream, allowing powerful weather systems to reach normally arid areas.
- Precipitation reached levels "rarely seen in the otherwise extremely arid region," with the city of Taltal receiving nearly 40 millimeters of rain over three days, forcing the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array to enter survival mode.
- The National Disaster Prevention and Response Service reported that mudflows and flash flooding damaged hundreds of homes and affected thousands of people across northern Chile.
- While similar snowfall events occurred in 2025 and 2011, atmospheric scientist René Garreaud from the University of Chile noted such occurrences remain rare, stating "We see these kinds of events only a few times, if any, per decade.
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The Atacama Desert in Chile, known as one of the driest regions in the world, has turned white following a series of storms. This unusual weather event in August quickly transformed the desert's brown and arid landscape into a white landscape.
One of Earth’s driest places was just covered in snow
Rare storms covered huge stretches of Chile’s Atacama Desert in snow and dumped extraordinary amounts of rain on one of the driest regions on Earth. The extreme weather shut down observatories, triggered damaging floods and mudflows, and unfolded against the backdrop of a strengthening El Niño.
Unusual winter storms covered vast areas of the Atacama desert in northern Chile with snow during the month of August, in a phenomenon particularly rare in one of the driest regions of the planet. Images captured by the Landsat 8 and 9 satellites of NASA and the United States Geological Service (USGS), show the transformation of [...] The Snow content covers the Atacama desert and exceptional rains cause floods in northern Chile appear first in …
NASA's satellites capture an exceptional phenomenon: the most arid desert of the Snow-covered Planet! At the origin of this rare and surprising spectacle: the powerful El Niño phenomenon, which disturbs the atmosphere.
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