Rare snowfall in Atacama Desert forces the world's most powerful radio telescope into 'survival mode'

A photo of the ALMA facilities blanketed in snow, with the "ALMA" sign visible.

A rare snowfall in the driest place on Earth has halted operations of one of the world's premier telescope arrays, and climate change may mean the observatory will face more extreme weather events like this in the future.

The snow has blanketed part of the Atacama Desert, which gets less than an inch of rainfall per year and is home to home the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a large network of radio telescopes in northern Chile.