Rare snowfall blankets Atacama Desert as storms hit northern Chile

Back-to-back winter storms in August 2026 have brought rare, widespread snowfall to the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, extending from the Andes mountains to near the Pacific coast. While the typically arid region has experienced snowfall previously, notably in 2025 and 2011, the recent events were unusually extensive in both scale and impact.

Satellite imagery from the NASA-USGS Landsat 8 and Landsat 9 satellites captured the progression of the weather on 6 and 14 August, showing snow coverage on the Chajnantor plateau. A subsequent storm in the second half of the month blanketed an even wider area, with data from the Terra satellite on 19 August confirming snow extending westward across the desert’s hyper-arid core and close to the Pacific coast south of the port city of Antofagasta.

The severe weather disrupted major scientific operations. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), located on the Chajnantor plateau, suspended operations and moved its antennas into a protective survival mode as snow and high winds set in. Several other major astronomical observatories in the coastal area also halted activities during the event.

Meteorological analysis indicates the precipitation was driven by a cutoff low that spun off from an unusually large trough spanning from the tip of South America into the subtropics. René Garreaud, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Chile, noted that this atmospheric disruption, combined with ample coastal moisture, produced precipitation across an unusually wide swath of the region, including offshore areas, the coast, the desert core, and the Andes.

The impact on the ground was significant. In Taltal, on Chile’s northern coast, nearly 40 millimetres of rain fell in three days, approximately 10 times the annual mean for the area. The abundant precipitation triggered destructive mudflows and flash flooding. The National Disaster Prevention and Response Service (SENAPRED) reported that thousands of people were affected and hundreds of homes sustained major damage.

Garreaud described the magnitude of the rainfall as rarely seen in the otherwise extremely arid region, stating that such events occur only a few times, if any, per decade. The strengthening El Niño provided the backdrop for the anomalously wet winter in north-central Chile, which also saw a major weather event affect the Norte Chico region in July.