The rainiest winter in a decade

Last time I moved to the Middle East I barely ever saw the rain. This time it is quite a different story.

We are in the thick of what is probably the worst storm Israel has seen in several years. Since Saturday it's been raining, cold and windy. Ya, I know no sympathy -- that's only 4 days. But, what's critical to understand is that this isn't drizzle, it's RAIN. Great torrents of rain. And, Jerusalem's infrastructure cannot handle it (including the house I live in where the living room is once again a pool and now there are leaks coming from the ceiling. Alas, this is not abnormal -- it's winter!). As one Israeli colleague said to me today, "We are acting as if this is extreme. We pray for rain and then it comes and it's too much."

Indeed.

What makes it unpleasant is the aforementioned lack of central heating. For example, today in my office on windy Mt Scopus the heater is not working -- it's very chilly in here, it might even be time to put on my down sweater. (At home I have changed space heaters and the one I have now has a fan which has improved my comfort immeasurably.  It's better able to keep up with the drafts of cold wind that sneak through my improvised window coverings.)

In addition to the general lack of central heating is the general refusal of the population to prepare for winter. If I can make an analogy it's a bit like Vancouver drivers who refuse to put snow tires on their cars because the chances of snow are pretty minimal in the city. And even if it does snow, it'll probably melt in the next day or two. Here people don't clear drains of debris so that when the rains come it will have somewhere to go.  This is as true for the streets -- which become rivers -- as it is for public places and private residences. 

This failure to prepare resulted in quite a bit of drama at my local cafe (a favourite because it is open on Shabbat) on Saturday. One side of the cafe has a wall of high windows -- on the outside there is a wall with planter boxes along it. Between the wall and the windows (at about shoulder level if you were standing next to it) is a narrow space that turned into a trough with the rain running off the roof into it. The drainage of the trough was obviously blocked because as the rain poured down the water level rose on the windows - it was like watching an aquarium fill. In one part it was leaking through. A cafe worker headed out to fix the problem, pushing all the water and its flotsam and jetsam along the trough and finally down upon the entrance: the security guard and his backpack got a soaker. Twenty minutes later the exercise was repeated. On the third attempt the worker finally reached into the trough, finding the drain and picked out all the leaves and branches that had accumulated there. Success!

You could say the Jerusalem attitude to winter is to grin and bear it. You won't enjoy any of it, but it will pass. The rains will come, but they usually only come for 2 or 3 days. In between you can have a week of sunshine and warming to about 15C, which as I have said is pretty amazing. But, when storms last longer, it really starts to wear on people. And, it looks like we have 2 or 3 more days to go since a massive low pressure system is sitting over Israel. Before it moves on we may have snow.

I'm a little excited about the snow.