It’s easy to forget that the natural world rarely fits our storybook notions of it. Tug on one strand of this planets interconnected web, and you get truly strange results. And so it is with the orange snow being seen around Eastern Europe this week.
The snow isn’t the result of dye, or a weird ecological disaster, but instead a natural process that happens every five years or so. In the Sahara, massive storms kick up huge clouds of dust. Scientists have found dust from the Sahara drifting on American coastlines.
It’s pulled to the southwest by the winds and flows into Europe via low-pressure systems. In Europe this can manifest as a strange rusty haze.
Once it’s high up enough, it mixes with water and the water cycle takes its course, pulling the dust down in the form of snow. Hence, the feeling of skiing on Mars.
So, yes, it’s slightly unnerving, but it’s completely natural. In fact, orange snow was mentioned in an oddball incident involving food-safe coloring leaking into the atmosphere in a Russian town, yielding a bright blue snow.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BgwK_qeFSTA/
Really, if you want to be concerned, keep an eye out for red snow; it’s a sign that microorganisms are breeding in the snow as the Earth warms.
But this, while eerie, is harmless. And a good reminder that we only think we know the natural world.
(via the BBC)
