‘Orange snow’ covers parts of eastern Europe

People in eastern Europe were surprised to see that several mountainous areas had been covered with what appears to be orange snow.

“Eerie images” posted on social media from Russia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Romania and Moldova look as if they “could almost be scenes from Mars”, says Sky News.

Meteorologists have said the phenomenon is caused by a sandstorm that blew across the Sahara Desert in North Africa, mixing with snow and rain. The storm travelled through Greece up to Russia and was so large it was visible via Nasa satellite imagery, CNN reports.

Steven Keates, a weather forecaster at the UK’s Met Office, told The Independent: “As the sand gets lifted to the upper levels of the atmosphere, it gets distributed elsewhere.

“When it rains or snows, it drags down whatever is up there, if there is sand in the atmosphere.”

This is one of the largest transfers of desert sand from the Sahara to Greece ever, according to the Athens Observatory.

This isn’t the first time eastern Europe has encountered tinted snow. In 2007 an “oily” orange snow fell across three regions of southern Siberia.