Cairo Gets First Snow in 100+ Years

Cairo saw a rare and wonderful sight today: Snow. Much of the Middle East has been blanketed by the white stuff in recent days thanks to a region-wide cold snap and winter storm. According to local news reports, Cairo hasn't gotten snow in more than a century, the LA Times reports. Talk of the weather lit up social media—you can see a nice collection of tweeted images at the Huffington Post—with some joking that it was the mystical work of Gen. Abdel Fattah Sisi. "It's the first time in my life that I have seen it like this," one resident told the AFP.

But the snow is causing major problems elsewhere in the region. Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan are being hammered by weather they weren't designed to withstand, sending agencies rushing to distribute blankets and tarps, al-Jazeera reports. Jerusalem, meanwhile, has been hit with three feet of snow, knocking out power and closing roads—and officials today warned that the worst was yet to come. "We are expecting a second storm triple the size of the one we've seen now," one municipality spokesman said, according to the Jerusalem Post. (More snow stories.)