'Orange snow' covers Eastern Europe. Here's why it happened

New Delhi: People in eastern Europe are baffled at the appearance of orange-tinted snow that has turned the mountainous regions of Ukraine, Russia, Bulgaria and Romania into a Martian surface. 

According to a report in the BBC, the orange colouration is caused by fine particles of sand being lifted from the Sahara into the atmosphere, travelling across the world and falling back to the ground mixed in with rain and snow.

As per the report, meteorologists stated that the phenomenon is caused by sand from Sahara desert storms mixing with snow and rain. It occurs roughly once every five years but concentration of sand is higher than the usual this time, as reported.

The images of the mountainous landscapes in tinted orange have been posted on social media from Russia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Romania and Moldova, leaving people utterly amazed.

However, this is not the first time that Europeans have experienced a strange snow-tint. In 2007, a similar phenomenon happened when mysterious 'oily' orange snow fell across three regions of southern Siberia reportedly.