The internet has been flooded with stunning images of the snow-covered Sahara desert in northwestern Algeria. After the snowfall earlier this month, temperatures in the hottest desert in Algeria’s Naama province, in the northern portion of the Sahara and close to the Moroccan border, dropped to below freezing.

Ain Sefra, known as the gateway to the Sahara desert, had a small sprinkling of snow. Temperatures in Ain Sefra have plummeted below -2 degrees Celsius for the last three nights, according to BBC Weather’s Nicky Berry on Wednesday. Berry stated that the temperature was only a few degrees colder than usual for this time of year.

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Images of magnificent patterns of ice crystals in the red dunes have gone viral on the internet.

The following are images and videos of snowfall in the Sahara desert:

Snow fell in the desert in 2021, 2018, 2017, and 2016. Snowfall on the red dunes, on the other hand, shocked everyone in December 2016. According to the BBC, residents of Ain Sefra saw snow for the first time since 1979 in 2016.

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Snowfall in the desert is “rare but not unheard of,” according to a UK Met Office spokesman, as quoted by the Independent.

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According to the 2018 assessment of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the identification of extreme climate in the Sahara region has been hampered by a lack of data and scientific investigations. According to The Independent, the rising desertification of the Sahara desert is being caused by hotter, drier temperatures and altering weather patterns in Africa as a result of the climate crisis.