A massive storm traveled from the Sahara Desert in Africa to the Sierra Nevada ski resort in Granada, Spain. The video looks like it has been captured on the surface of Mars, and it looked ethereal.
The videos were shared all over social media and it showed a thick layer of orange dust blanketing the resort’s snow-covered slopes, all the while an ominous orange glow emanates from the sky above.
Skiers can be seen, revealing pristine white snow beneath the dust while going down the slope.
It looks like the panorama is occurring on the Martian surface and not in sunny southern Spain. In fact, when asked if this were what it would look like “if Mars had ski slopes,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk replied with a tongue-in-cheek “yeah.”
Dust from the Sahara covered this Spanish ski resort yesterday and it became a global spectacle.
The situation got bad enough to force operators of the resort to shut down several ski lifts earlier this week.
Storm Celia has caused havoc across much of central Europe, which lead to dramatic skies and compromised air quality. Meteorologists in Spain warned of “extremely unfavorable” conditions.
It is yet to be determined if this could be attributed to climate change, but previous research has linked climate change to increasingly turbulent weather patterns and even the expansion of the Sahara Desert.
“There are many concerns regarding the impact that climate change is having on the patterns of the frequency and intensity of the storms that favor the arrival of dust to our country,” Rubén del Campo, a spokesman for Spain’s weather service, told the Toronto Star.
Well, it is a long while before we will be able to determine if this is what a Martian storm looks like too.
