A 1937 infrared photograph shows a snow-covered Cameron Highlands, but is it real? The story sparks debate about the impact of climate change and development on this Malaysian hill station.
In the annals of Malaysian meteorological lore, few stories inspire as much wonder—and scepticism—as the day snow allegedly fell on Cameron Highlands. A yellowing page from The Straits Times, dated 17 January 1937, chronicles this meteorological unicorn: temperatures plummeting to a barely believable -0.1°C, and what witnesses described as ice fragments dancing through the highland air.
The evidence comes to us through an infrared photograph, a technological novelty of the time that rendered the tropical foliage in ghostly white and the sky in dramatic black—a technical quirk that has led some to dismiss the entire episode as a clever piece of colonial-era camera trickery. Yet the temperature reading remains harder to explain away, documented in the precise, unsentimental language of weather records. The possibility that Cameron Highlands once hosted a freak snowfall seems less outlandish when considering the region’s dramatic climatic transformation. Where visitors once huddled under wool blankets, they browse markets in T-shirts today, complaining about the humidity. Local meteorologists note that the average temperature has crept steadily upward over the decades, turning what was once Malaysia’s natural refrigerator into something closer to a lukewarm bath. The infrared image from 1937, with its phantasmal white landscape, has become something of a Rorschach test for the highlands’ environmental concerns. To conservationists, it’s evidence of what’s been lost; to sceptics, a photographic curiosity; to longtime residents, a reminder of when Cameron Highlands truly deserved its reputation as Southeast Asia’s Little England. Whether snow actually fell that January morning remains a matter of debate, but what’s undeniable is the highland’s warming trajectory. The average temperatures in Cameron Highlands have increased by 7.5°C over the past three decades due to over-development and climate change, affecting residents and visitors. Where British colonials once built fireplaces (which still stand in some heritage buildings, now more decorative than functional), modern developers install air-conditioning units. The very notion of snow in Cameron Highlands has shifted from improbable to impossible as climate change and development conspire to transform Malaysia’s premier hill station into just another warm destination. Even if we can’t prove the snow happened, the fact that it seemed plausible in 1937 tells us everything about how much these highlands have changed. Today’s visitors, sweating through their strawberry-picking excursions, might find it harder to imagine that this tropical retreat once flirted with freezing temperatures—let alone the possibility of snow
CAMERON HIGHLANDS CLIMATE CHANGE DEVELOPMENT SNOWFALL IR INFRARED PHOTOGRAPHY
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