Rare, Widespread Snow in the Atacama Desert

Back-to-back winter storms blanketed parts of Chile's Atacama Desert in a rare, widespread snow this August, stretching from the Andes nearly to the Pacific coast, NASA Science reports. Satellite images from Landsat 8 and 9 show the Chajnantor plateau, home to the ALMA radio telescope array, transformed from bare brown ground to solid white between August sixth and August fourteenth. High winds and snow forced ALMA to suspend operations and shift its antennas into a protective survival mode, and several other observatories along the coast did the same. Atmospheric scientist René Garreaud attributed the event to an unusually large pressure trough combined with coastal moisture, calling the resulting precipitation something the hyper-arid region sees only a few times a decade, with the wet pattern unfolding against the backdrop of a strengthening El Niño.

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