Last update - 00:00 19/02/2008
Snowstorm blankets Golan, Jerusalem area for third time this year
By Eli Ashkenazi and Tamara Traubmann, Haaretz Correspondents, and Haaretz Service
A snow storm blanketed the Golan Heights and the Jerusalem area early Tuesday morning, with some 75 centimeters of accumulation reported on the lower slopes of Mt. Hermon.
Snow ploughs are currently working to clear streets in the capital, but the Jerusalem Municipality's emergency response center said there were no reports of serious problems. Mt. Hermon will be closed to visitors due to the heavy snowfall.
Forecasters said the snowfall, which began at around 4 A.M. in Jerusalem, was likely to stop by the afternoon, adding that Tuesday's storm was likely to lead to less accumulation than the previous snowfall in January. This is the third time this year that snow has fallen in the capital.
Jerusalem schools declared a late start, with classes delayed until 9 A.M., while numerous school districts in the surrounding area, including Gush Etzion, Mevasseret Tzion, and Hebron canceled school for the day. Schools are also closed in the northern Golan Heights.
Classes at Hebrew University of Jerusalem will begin at noon.
The storm also brought wet weather to other areas of the country, with heavy rainfall reported in the northern Galilee.
Coldest January in 15 years falls short of being Israel's harshest winter
Despite the current storm, this is not the harshest winter Israel has experienced in recent years, weather forecasters and climatologists agree.
But according to Nahum Malik of the Meteotech forecasting service, while three snowfalls in Jerusalem "is not something especially common, something that happens every year, neither is it exceptional."
Amos Porat of the Israel Metorological Service said that Jerusalem gets two snowfalls a year about every five years. In the winter of 2000-2001, he noted, the city had snow three times, and in 1999-2000, it had four snowy days. In 1991-1992, an especially harsh winter, the capital had 10 days of snow.
Both Malik and Porat attributed the general feeling that this winter has been especially severe not to the precipitation, but to last month's unusual cold. In most parts of the country, this was the coldest January since 1992, and during the first of its two cold spells, in mid-month, temperatures in some parts of the country hit all-time lows, Porat said.
January was also unusual for how many cold days in a row there were. Sde Boker, for instance, experienced six days in a row of temperatures below zero degrees Celsius the longest such stretch since 1964.
"January was one to two degrees colder than average in many areas, and that's a lot," said Malik. "There has not been a January this cold in 15 years. But people's memories are fairly short, so they are justified in feeling that there was something exceptional here."
In contrast, he said, February has thus far been a typical winter month. However, he added, "the current cold front might send us below the average."
Climatologists say that extreme weather phenomena have multiplied due to global warming.
However, it is impossible to tie any specific climatic event to global warming; only the larger pattern can be blamed on this development.
On Tuesday morning, snow is expected throughout the north and center of the country in locations 600 meters or more above sea level, possibly even including the hills of the northern Negev. In lower areas, heavy rain will fall, and winds will be very strong. However, the storm is expected to abate in the afternoon.