Snow blankets Atacama, the world's driest desert - VIDEO
In a rare and stunning weather event, residents of northern Chile’s Atacama Desert — the driest desert on Earth — woke up Thursday to find their arid surroundings covered in snow.
"INCREDIBLE! The Atacama Desert, the world's most arid, is COVERED IN SNOW," the ALMA observatory, situated 2,900 meters (9,500 feet) above sea level, wrote on X, alongside a video of vast expanses covered in a dusting of white, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.
#Snow fell in the world's driest desert, the #Atacama.
— News.Az (@news_az) June 27, 2025
The desert in northern #Chile has been home to cutting-edge telescopes for decades. The #ALMA observatory in the Atacama reported that its main facility had not seen snow for 10 years.
Raul Cordero, a climate scientist at… pic.twitter.com/QiTRnqJCUp
The observatory added that while snow is common on the nearby Chajnanator Plateau, situated at over 5,000 meters and where its gigantic telescope is situated, it had not had snow at its main facility in a decade.
University of Santiago climatologist Raul Cordero told AFP that it was too soon to link the snow to climate change but said that climate modelling had shown that "this type of event, meaning precipitation in the Atacama desert, will likely become more frequent."
The Atacama, home to the world's darkest skies, has for decades been the go-to location for the world's most advanced telescopes.
The ALMA telescope, which was developed by the European Southern Observatory, the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, is widely recognized as being the most powerful.
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