Snow Day!

Just kidding!  Ok, so the title is quite misleading since we didn't have any snow in Tel Aviv... However, the North and Jerusalem had tons of snow (for here) and they did have snow days.  Pretty exciting when you are just used to tons of rain and not much else.

For the past week all of Israel (and really a lot of the Middle East) has been having a wild storm.  The weather was the topic of conversation all over the media which is crazy because it's about a week before the election and politics is a pretty big deal here :)

Also, in Canada the weather is one of those common conversation topics, but here not so much.  Usually common topics are politics, religion, or maybe complaining about how the garbage trucks always come by at 4am and operate as loudly as possible. But you never really hear: "so, it's sunny again huh?  Yah, second straight month of sun.  pretty sweet."  you know?  It's just not that interesting when you only have two seasons: 1) sun and hot; 2) rain and cold.  

So when the storm rolled in last Friday it was fun (I love a good thunderstorm) but not really uncommon.  Even when it didn't stop raining for 2 days, not really a big deal.  But it never stopped.  And it was coming down crazy hard, with super strong winds.  They were so big that trees were falling over, and signs were falling on cars.  That sort of storm.  In Tel Aviv we really didn't get the worst of it.  We had one day of intense wind when Zach and I walked to the beach to try and get a picture of the crazy waves, but as you see, the salt water blurred the lens a bit.... (note to self, don't try and take a picture beside salt water in a wind storm)...

You can see that we had a little break in the rain which is why we braved the wind to get here.  We didn't beat that next bank of clouds home....

Note how the palm trees are all sideways.  Also, the beach is completely flooded - it usually extends out to the breakwater that you can just sort of see to the right of the picture (it is also in the first picture on the left - under all that water)

WINDY!

Anyway, the major TA highway flooded along with the train tracks so the city shut down for a couple of days.  A friend commented that when missiles rain down everyone continues on their life, but when it is pouring, the whole country shuts down.  Pretty much sums it up.

Yesterday the sun came out for the first time in a week and as we ran along the boardwalk, among unbelievable amounts of debris and garbage littering the beach, we saw the most beautiful sunset I've seen in a long time.  One of those hot pink ones over a sparkling gold ocean :)