Snowfall in West Papua, while severe drought hits other parts of New Guinea

Extreme weather patterns continue to hit the Pacific region with some of the highest parts of New Guinea experiencing snow this week.

Reports from West Papua say parts of the highlands region have been blanketed by snow and ice in recent days.

This includes parts of Lanny Jaya regency — Go, Balum Kuyawage, and West Wano districts. In the case of Kuyawage, the snowfall follows a pattern of drought and frost over recent weeks.

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• Other West Papua reports

Snow is not unusual for West Papua’s Jayawijaya mountains, where the world’s only glacier in a tropical region exists.

However, snowfall is rare in other parts of this region and usually means crop failure and food insecurity for local communities.

At the same time, other parts of New Guinea, including Papua New Guinea, are experiencing severe drought as a result of the El Niño weather phase.

In South Papua province on the Indonesian side of the giant island, rampant clearance of lowland forest and wetlands for agriculture projects has created dangerous fire hotspots, exacerbated by El Niño.

A new satellite fire-monitoring platform, Firewatch, had detected more than 96,000 hotspots across Indonesia as of late last month.

All up, an estimated approximately 103,000 ha of land burned nationwide during the first half of 2026.

And as El Niño tightens its grip, forecasters warn the fire risk could increase more.