Sand Covering Snow in Saudi Arabia Looks Like Tiramisu Dessert

A remarkable video showing the aftermath of snow and dust storms in Saudi Arabia has set stomachs growling over social media, with many viewers likening the scene to a gargantuan tiramisu.

The footage was originally posted to TikTok by user @x509o at the weekend, and it has amassed hundreds of thousands of views online, after going viral on the platform and being picked up by an array of accounts on social media.

The extraordinary video was captured at the summit of an enormous red-brown mound, which upon closer inspection turns out to be a towering snowdrift coated entirely in a smooth dusting of sand.

In the video, the person behind the camera scoops up handfuls of the soft deposit, exposing brilliant white snow beneath a cocoa-like blanket of dust, before crumbling it effortlessly between his fingers.

Other bystanders can be seen in the background of the shot, as cars stand stationary at the bottom of the drift.

"Tiramisu, anyone? Quite spectacular scenery with snow in the hills north of Saudi Arabia then blasted with a massive dust storm on top of the snow. The result does seem tasty," the popular @severeweatherEU account wrote on Twitter.

The reaction to the video has been dominated by food jokes, "Dessert in the desert" being one such slogan, though others have compared the scene to something that you'd expect to see on the surface of Mars.

And it isn't the only footage of the phenomenon that has made its way to social media over the past week, with another video showing a person playing with the sand-covered snow in Tabuk, a mountainous area in the northwestern region of the Gulf country.

Although much of Saudi Arabia is hot and dry, snowfall is a relatively common occurrence in and around Tabuk, which also saw snow in January.

Saudi Arabia's Civil Defense issued weather warnings for snow showers across much of the country last week, and has warned that more could fall in Tabuk this week.

Last week, social media was awash with video footage of camels being buffeted in blizzard-like conditions, which gave rise to a false claim that Saudi Arabia had not experienced snow in half a century.

The winter season in Tabuk stretches from December to February, and is reported to be popular with tourists because of its snowfall.

"Weather stations report large amounts of snow likely to be deepest around December, especially close to late December," according to the website Champion Traveler.