The people of Ain Sefra were greeted by a strange sight when they woke up last Sunday: 4-12 inches of snow had fallen overnight in the northern Algerian town known as “the Gateway to the Desert”, situated between the Sahara Desert and the Atlas Mountains. This is only the third time in the last 40 years that the Sahara’s dunes have been coated with snow. The Sahara is one of the hottest places on the planet but strangely, it snowed there last year as well. Before that, it had been 37 years since Ain Sefra’s last snowfall.

The Sahara is the largest and hottest desert in the world, covering 3.5 million square miles, an area approximately the size of the continental US. In  1922, a temperature of 136° Fahrenheit,  the highest land surface temperature ever recorded, was set in the Sahara at El Azizia, Libya.

The prophet Isaiah speaks of deserts blooming repeatedly in his description of the end-of-days.

The arid desert shall be glad, The wilderness shall rejoice And shall blossom like a rose. Isaiah 35:1

I am about to do something new; Even now it shall come to pass, Suddenly you shall perceive it: I will make a road through the wilderness And rivers in the desert. Isaiah 43:19