Saudi Arabia Sees Snow After 30 Years: Icy Sand Dunes Stun the World.

Camels in the Snow! Saudi Arabia’s Scorching Desert Freezes After 30 Years.

Images of camels trekking across snow-covered sand dunes in Saudi Arabia on December 23, 2025, have stunned the world, as a country known for blistering heat briefly transformed into a surreal winter landscape after a powerful northern cold front swept through the region, triggering what meteorologists are calling a once-in-a-generation weather event.

For the first time in nearly 30 years, rare and heavy snowfall blanketed flat desert plains and golden dunes in parts of Al-Jawf, Tabuk and Hail, with Jabal Al-Lawz (Almond Mountain), rising 2,580 metres, recording thick snow cover and temperatures plunging to –4°C. Viral visuals of residents skiing on snow-covered sand and camels cautiously navigating icy dunes — initially dismissed by many as AI-generated — were later confirmed to be completely genuine.

Experts explain the phenomenon through a “warming paradox”, noting that while global temperatures continue to rise, a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, which, when it collides with a rare intrusion of polar air from the Mediterranean, can unleash extreme and unusual events such as snowfall in deserts. While Saudi Arabia’s icy dunes remain an extraordinary anomaly, India does have its own frozen deserts, though they are permanent geographical features rather than rare weather surprises.

Regions like Ladakh, located between the Karakoram and Himalayan ranges, are classified as cold deserts due to their high altitude of 3,000 to 8,000 metres, where winter temperatures can drop below –40°C; Spiti Valley in Himachal Pradesh is another stark, high-altitude cold desert known for its barren, moon-like terrain; and Nubra Valley in Ladakh, famous for its double-humped Bactrian camels, often sees snow blanketing its sand dunes in winter.

These areas are called deserts not because of heat, but because they lie in the rain-shadow zone of the Himalayas, receiving less than 10 cm of annual precipitation, mostly as snow, making them landscapes that are both frozen and arid, quietly mirroring — year after year — the rare spectacle now captivating the world in Saudi Arabia.