Africa’s coldest city that’s blanketed by snow and sees temperatures of -11C | Travel News | Travel

A small town that’s blanketed in snow for half the year is the coldest in Africa.

Ifrane is a town in the Middle Atlas region of northern Morocco. It has a population of about 15,000 people and is known by locals as “the Switzerland of Morocco”.

The modern town was established by the French in 1929 so European colonisers could find relief from the summer heat of Morocco’s interior plains. 

Catering to the tastes of the upper middle classes who could afford to own a car and a home in the suburbs, Ifrane’s houses were built in traditional European styles and resembled those in the suburbs of contemporaneous French cities.

Ifrane, home to Lake Dayet Iffer, is a resort town set high up in the Atlas Mountains and also a popular altitude training destination.

The city has a continental-influenced hot-summer Mediterranean climate with short, somewhat dry, warm summers and long, cool, damp winters when nights can be severely cold.

Owing to the town’s elevation and proximity to the Atlantic Ocean, rainfall is very heavy. Precipitation patterns follow the classic Mediterranean range from October to April. The town also receives high snowfall starting as early as October and lasting well into the spring season. 

The annual average temperature does not exceed 11C. Ifrane holds the record for the lowest temperature ever observed in Africa and the Arab world: −23.9C in 1935.

Ifrane’s biodiversity is unique, with many rare and endangered species. Animals include most of the world’s population of the threatened Barbary macaque, the golden jackal, the caracal, and the African crimson-winged finch.

The mountains separate the Sahara Desert from the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The name “Atlantic” is derived from the mountain range, which stretches 1,600 miles through Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. 

Also nearby is Lake Dayet Iffer – a 300-metre wide and six-metre deep natural lake in Dayat Aoua. The lake is home to many waterfowl and has been designated a wetland by the World Wide Fund for Nature.