Like 'skiing on Mars:' Orange snow blankets Eastern Europe

Doyle Rice | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Freakish orange snow blankets ski slopes Skiers and snowboarders were treated to orange snow in Russia, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Romania.

Sure, we've all been warned about yellow snow, but what about orange snow?

Thanks to dust blowing in from the Sahara Desert, folks in several Eastern European countries this weekend were surprised to see their snow turn a weird orange color.

Skiers and snowboarders saw orange snow in at least four countries, including Russia, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Romania

"We're skiing on Mars today," exclaimed one social media user as he skied down the slopes, according to CNN.

The freak weather phenomenon was brought about by sand being blown from the Sahara Desert in northern Africa. In a NASA satellite image, the dust was visible as a light brown streak staining the white clouds above Eastern Europe, the Weather Channel said.

AccuWeather meteorologist Eric Leister said "the jet stream dipped southward across Europe and into northern Africa. This caused the storm track to also be farther south with a series of storms crossing the Mediterranean Sea."

Leister said the final storm in this series tracked far enough south that dust from northern Africa was pulled into the storm.

The phenomenon occurs roughly once every five years, but concentrations were higher than usual this time, according to the BBC.

Colored snow has been reported for centuries. "In 1755, a six-foot-deep blood snowfall in the Alps reportedly contained a huge mass of red material, while in 1810, French newspapers reported a shower of red snow fell over Paris," according to the book Freaks of the Storm by Randy Cerveny.

Cerveny said that Charles Darwin once encountered red snow in the Andes, while pink snow was reported in the U.S., in Alma, Colo., in 1895.

Yellow snow was once reported, likely due to pollen in the air, in Bethlehem, Pa., in March 1879. And black snow has been spotted several times, Cerveny said, thanks to soot or ash from a fire.

The most recent occurrence of orange snow in Siberia was in 2007.

Contributing: The Associated Press