More wild winter weather in Jerusalem - and maybe snow!

Another windy, stormy cold front has hit Israel, heralded yesterday and earlier today by the famed "ovekh" that I like so much (the adjective is avikh). The sky was a very peculiar brownish-white color this morning.

I'm sitting in the National Library listening to the wind gusts and the rain falling on the skylights. This is the first time I've been here in a week - I injured my left knee last week and have had a hard time walking, but I'm feeling better today. According to the Jerusalem weather forecast on Yerushamayim, we might get snow in Jerusalem late tonight and on Friday all day. The expectation is for no more than 5 mm of snow - not much.

Hebrew has a lot of words for different kinds of rain - the yoreh (יורה) is the first rain of the season, in the fall, and the malkosh (מלקוש) is the last rain in the spring. On the Yerushamayim site someone commented that in the Old City there is gishmei bracha (גשמי ברכה) - rain of blessings, strong but not too strong. We also have geshem meorav (גשם מעורב) - mixed rain, either with hail (ברד or barad) or snow (in Ithaca we call this a "wintry mix"). When snow falls it can be mixed with rain, or it can be שלג נקי (sheleg naqi) - "clean snow," or just snow, unmixed with anything else. In addition to hail, there is also גראופל (graupel). What is graupel? According to Wikipedia, it is "also called soft hail or snow pellets," and it refers to "precipitation that forms when supercooled droplets of water are collected and freeze on a falling snowflake, forming a 2–5 mm (0.079–0.197 in) ball of rime."

Snow doesn't fall in Jerusalem

Today was supposed to be the big day for snow in Jerusalem, but all I saw was a little bit of snow on the lawn in the morning, and when I was at Shabbat lunch, there were a few brief falls of hail. It snowed in the north and on the Hermon, however.

A picture from my lawn this morning:

This afternoon, when I got home from Shabbat lunch and the sky had started to clear.

A pretty cloud in the southern sky.

I, personally, am waiting impatiently for spring to really spring. Today I saw some snapdragons and petunias flowering. The cyclamens are also flowering (they are called raqefet in Hebrew - רקפת).

To sunnier days!

Weather words in Israel - sand, rain, and snow

A couple of weeks ago, the weather was described as ovech (אובך). It was cloudy (מעונן) or partly cloudy (מעונן חלקי) and there was ovech. I looked the word up in the dictionary, and the translation was "mist." But it wasn't misty outside - instead the sky was cloudy and the air was not clear. It looked like fog, but it wasn't fog. I found out that ovech refers to sand particles hanging in the air and blocking visibility - in other words, a sandstorm, but in this case a rather gentle one.

This morning I got up, opened the shutters and looked outside - and behold (הנה), it's cloudy and there is also some ovech. In the southern part of the country there is, in fact, a sandstorm.

And now the whole country is preparing for two days when it is so'er (סוער) - stormy, gashum (גשום) - rainy, and qar (קר) - cold. On Mt. Hermon, in the far north, it is mushlag (מושלג) - snowy. (The word for snow is sheleg (שלג)). Since it's been snowing on Mt. Hermon, hordes of people have rushed up to see the snow and to ski.

The news this morning warned that tonight in Jerusalem it will get to 1˚ C - just a smidge above freezing, and that we should prepare and make sure our apartments are warm enough. Tomorrow in Jerusalem it may actually snow! And people are very excited and hope it will happen. Speaking as an Ithacan, I am not looking forward to snow, since one of the reasons I decided to spend my sabbatical in Israel was to avoid the cold and snow in Ithaca.

Stay tuned for updates...