3.11.09

It wasn't just Kiryat Bialik...

Here's a youtube video of Hertzeliya (near Tel Aviv) on Sunday:



Here's an even more impressive film: one of my friends took this video on his way to work through Haifa yesterday.



(I hope he had both hands on the wheel... those are geysers!) Last night, I was on one of the streets in the video. The water(falls) had cleared, but slabs of asphalt lifted from the road littered the parking spaces.

Kiryat Motzkin used to have the nickname "Agam Motzkin"-- Motzkin Lake-- because it flooded so often in the wintertime. As Doron said in the comments on Sunday's post, the primary reason that Israeli streets flood so badly when we DO get rain likes in Israel's "yiyeh beseder" attitude: ehhhhh, there probably won't be bad rain this winter. Why would be possibly need to clean fallen leaves and trash out of our storm drains?

On the plus side, though, the air smells like springtime, and the grass in the yard is already greener. A strong breeze whips in through my open window. The sky is deep, clear blue. Time to go hang laundry outside! (Did I mention that hardly anyone in this country owns a dryer?)

Every long-term Israeli I meet says that winters used to be much colder and wetter here. In recent years, winters have been warm(ish) and dry, plunging the water level in the Kinneret to dangerous lows. Let's hope this winter marks the shift of weather back to old patterns rather than a blip in global warming.

Bring on the rains!

5 comments:

  1. Shalom, Maya! Thank you for the frequent trips to Israel.

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  2. Maya, those videos are crazy! I guess we had it pretty easy here in Gush Etsion...
    Enjoy the fresh air!

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  3. Shalom, Maya!

    Wow... crazy drivers in the second video!! If I remember correctly, it only takes about 3-4 inches of rushing water to move many smaller cars and some of those torrents looked much deeper than 3-4 inches -- and drivers were flying through them!

    I know water is such a precious commodity in Israel. I hope these rains filled your water supply for a long time to come.

    Joe

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  4. My goodness!!!!!!! If the roads were like this in Pittsburgh, everything would be closed down and barricaded!!!! I'm glad (haha) that YOU didn't make this video *while driving* :-). I hope your friend had his cellphone camera strapped to his head, perhaps :-). Yikes!!

    Wish there were some way to save this amazing amount of water, and not just let it run off into the sea... ah well! hopefully the Kinneret is filling up a bit???

    Love you,
    Ima in America

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  5. Woo, found this helpful article in JPost re/ all the flooding... glad to see that at least one or two roads were actually closed to traffic :-). AND that the Kinneret is indeed going up-- BUT that to really reach the 'full' level, you'd need 140 more rains just like this!

    http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1256799048944

    Ima in American

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