A rare snowfall blankets one of the driest places on Earth, shutting down a giant radio telescope — Earth as seen from space

This striking satellite photo captured a rare sight as “one of the driest places on Earth” was hit by a rare snowstorm earlier this year. The anomaly temporarily turned the barren, rocky landscape white and temporarily shut down one of the world’s most powerful radio telescopes.

The Atacama Desert is an approximately 40,500 square mile (105,000 square kilometer) non-polar desert located in a 1,000 mile (1,600 km) long strip of land wedged between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes Mountains in northern Chile. It is the world’s oldest non-polar desert and has remained semi-arid for at least 150 million years. And then there’s the Altiplano Plateau, the sunniest place on Earth, with sunlight levels comparable to Venus.

This desert is also widely considered to be one of the driest places on Earth, along with other hyperarid regions such as Antarctica and the Sahara Desert. According to Guinness World Records, some regions now receive just 0.002 inches (0.5 millimeters) of rainfall per year. Previous research suggests that parts of the Atacama experienced an almost 400-year period without record rainfall between 1570 and 1971.

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On June 25, Atacama was hit by a rare snowstorm as a “cold nuclear cyclone” unexpectedly drifted in from the north, coating more than half of the desert in white powder, according to the NASA Earth Observatory.

The satellite image above shows a portion of the Chajnantor Plateau desert that reaches approximately 16,000 feet (5,000 meters) above sea level. This region is home to the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) observatory. It is an array of more than 50 radio receiving antennas that explore the “dark universe.” (ALMA itself cannot be seen in the aerial photo.)

The region’s remote, dry, and high altitude location makes it ideal for astronomical research, as it reduces interference and maximizes ALMA-like data collection. However, when snow piled up at the observatory, ALMA temporarily went into “survival mode,” changing the position of its dish to prevent snow from accumulating and halting observations.

The ice dust may have also affected the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) telescope, located about 530 miles (850 km) southwest of ALMA, but the impact was not significant, according to Live Science’s sister site Space.com. The newly constructed Vera C. Rubin Observatory, also located near Atacama’s SOAR telescope, was not affected by the storm.

The snow did not last long, and by July 16 most of it had disappeared. The Earth Observatory said the sunlight may have been so intense in some places that the snow may have sublimated before it melted, or it may have gone directly from a solid state to a gas.

This is not the first time snow has fallen in Atacama. Similar events occurred in 2011, 2013, and 2021.

The region has experienced several heavy rains in recent years. When this happens, deadly mudslides can occur. In March 2015, heavy rains caused the worst flooding in Atacama history, killing at least 31 people, according to a 2016 study.

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When the rains come, desert flowers that normally appear in the spring can bloom unexpectedly during the winter, creating fields of bright petals around the desert. The most recent one occurred in 2024 after sudden rains caught the plants off guard.

Precipitation is rare in the Atacama for two reasons. First, it is located in the “rain shadow” of the Andes Mountains, blocking clouds coming in from the east. And second, cold ocean currents off the region’s western Pacific coast prevent water from evaporating above the desert. This makes the Atacama inhospitable to most life except for hardy desert flowers and extreme microorganisms that live beneath the arid surface.

However, recent unusual precipitation events in the region could be a sign that human-induced climate change is making the region more prone to snow and rain. If this trend continues, the Atacama may one day cease to be one of the driest places on Earth.

For more amazing satellite photos and astronaut images, check out Earth from the Space Archives.