14 DAY TRIAL // In case some still doubt it, here is further proof that the wackiest of winters happens in Russia. Just days after one town in this country became encased in ice and turned into a real-life “Frozen” landscape, the news broke that another city fell victim to another equally strange phenomenon.
Thus, it is said that, one morning, people living in the city of Saratov woke up to find that, while they were enjoying a well-deserved good night's rest, their homes and cars, together with all the other buildings in the city, got buried under a thick layer of orange snow.
Colored snow is a good enough reason to freak out
As shown in the photos included in the gallery below, it wasn't just orange snow that covered the city of Saratov in Russia. On the contrary, some buildings and roads can be seen peering from under a layer of light yellow and even brown snow.
RT tells us that, when coming face to face with this odd-looking colored snow, many assumed that the reason it was orange, yellow or brown was that it contained potentially dangerous chemical compounds. Some even went as far as to say that the snow was probably radioactive.
Hence, it should not come as a surprise that Saratov's residents didn't exactly jump at the chance to make orange snowmen or roll around on the ground hoping to create the perfect snow angel silhouette. On the contrary, most of them did their best to avoid coming into contact with it.
Fear not, it was all Mother Nature's doing
True, environmental pollution is a huge problem in this day and age. Still, it looks like harmful chemical compounds or radioactive materials had nothing to do with the colored snow that fell over Russia's Saratov city not too long ago.
According to specialist Mikhail Boltukhin, this peculiar snowstorm was due to a cyclone that brought sand from Africa's Sahara desert all the way to Russia. Otherwise put, the snow that fell over Saratov appeared orange, light yellow and brown because it was mixed with sand.
“The air coming from the West contains tiny particles of sand, which give the falling snow an orange hue,” Mikhail Boltukhin said in a statement. “Similar phenomena have been observed recently in various districts of the region and in other parts of the country, particularly in Crimea,” he added.
