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[NASA] Rare, Widespread Snow in the Atacama Desert

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  3. Rare, Widespread Snow in the…
 


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August 6, 2026
August 14, 2026

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A plateau in the Chilean Andes is surrounded by stratovolcanoes and lava domes. The dry, mostly brown landscape has a lighter brown patch near the center, marking the radio telescope array.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin

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The same plateau is now blanketed in white snow. The location of the radio telescope array is nearly indistinguishable from the surrounding terrain.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin
August 6, 2026August 14, 2026

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A plateau in the Chilean Andes is surrounded by stratovolcanoes and lava domes. The dry, mostly brown landscape has a lighter brown patch near the center, marking the radio telescope array.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin
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The same plateau is now blanketed in white snow. The location of the radio telescope array is nearly indistinguishable from the surrounding terrain.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin

August 6, 2026

August 14, 2026


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Image Details

Part of northern Chile transforms from bare to snow-covered in these images captured before and after winter storms in August 2026 by the NASA-USGS
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 and
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satellites. NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin.

In August 2026, back-to-back winter storms left parts of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile covered in a rare blanket of snow. The typically arid region has seen snowfall before, notably in 2025 and before that in 2011. But one of the 2026 events was unusually widespread, stretching from the Andes to near the Pacific coast.

The 

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 (Operational Land Imager) on the NASA-USGS 
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 and
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9 satellites captured these images (above) on August 6 and August 14, before and after a ******* of severe weather, respectively. They show a detailed view of the
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within the
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, home to the
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 (ALMA)—one of the planet’s most powerful radio telescopes. As snow and high winds set in, ALMA
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, moving its antennas into a protective survival mode.

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A blanket of snow spans a vast area of northern Chile, from the Andes to near the Pacific coast, captured in this image on August 19, 2026, by the 
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 (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s 
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 satellite.
NASA Earth Observatory/Lauren Dauphin

Another storm in the second half of the month blanketed an even wider area with fresh snowfall. This image, captured by the 

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 (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s 
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 satellite on August 19, shows snow extending westward from the Andes, across the desert’s hyper-arid core, and close to the Pacific coast south of the Chilean port city of Antofagasta. This coastal area is home to several other major astronomical observatories, some of which also
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during the event.

Most of the region’s winter precipitation comes from

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—low-pressure systems that become cut off from the jet stream and can occasionally reach northern Chile. That’s what happened in 2025, said René Garreaud, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Chile. The late-August 2026 storm also came from a cutoff low, but this one spun off from an unusually large
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—an elongated area of relatively low atmospheric pressure—that spanned an enormous stretch of the hemisphere, from the tip of South America up into the subtropics.

The atmospheric disruption, combined with ample coastal moisture, produced precipitation that spanned an unusually wide swath of the region—offshore, along the coast, across the core of the Atacama, and over the Andes. Totals reached a magnitude “rarely seen in the otherwise extremely arid region,” Garreaud said.

In some areas it fell as rain, not snow. Taltal, for instance, on Chile’s northern coast, accumulated nearly 40 millimeters (1.6 inches) of rain in three days—about 10 times its annual mean, Garreaud said. “We see these kinds of events only a few times, if any, per decade.”

The abundant precipitation spurred destructive

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in parts of northern Chile. The National Disaster Prevention and Response Service (SENAPRED)
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thousands were affected and hundreds of homes had major damage. 

Garreaud noted that the

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is the backdrop for the anomalously wet winter in north-central Chile. In addition to the August storms, a
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brought significant impacts to the country’s Norte Chico region. During El Niño, the subtropical Pacific high—which normally keeps the region dry—weakens, while a blocking high tends to form in the South Pacific near the tip of the continent. Together, these shifts push the Southern Hemisphere storm track equatorward.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the 

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and MODIS data from NASA 
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 and 
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. Story by Kathryn Hansen.

Downloads

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August 6, 2026: Landsat 8

JPEG (8.39 MB)

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August 14, 2026: Landsat 9

JPEG (13.44 MB)

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August 19, 2026: Terra MODIS

JPEG (3.22 MB)

References & Resources

  • CR2 (2026, July 23)
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    . Accessed August 26, 2026.
  • NASA Earth Observatory (2025, July 19)
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    . Accessed August 26, 2026.
  • National Weather Service, Climate Prediction Center (2026, August 13)
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    . Accessed August 26, 2026.
  • The Watchers (2026, August 18)
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    . Accessed August 26, 2026.

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