Picture of the week – first rains

September 23, 2009 - 7:44 AM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Picture of the Week 

Jerusalem, Rosh hashana. Two months of rain fall in just two days.

Jerusalem, Rosh hashana 2009. Two months of rain fall in just two days.


Israel was surprised this week by unusually heavy first rains. Accustomed to short, light showers that kick off the winter season, Israel got a soaking instead.

The storms over the Rosh Hashana holiday, brought in by a band of cold weather from Turkey and the Black sea, actually set a new rainfall record – what fell in just two days equaled the average total for both September and October, according to the Water Authority.

The storms were greeted with much pleasure. With five drought years behind us, Israelis are resorting to increasingly creative ways to reuse gray water and conserve fresh water (from short showers to inventive flushing systems for the loo) in the wake of the worst drought in Israel’s history.

In Kfar Saba, for instance, the municipality is now introducing a new biofilter that will clean urban rain water runoff to recharge old and out of service water wells. It’s a pilot project in the country’s first environmentally friendly urban housing project. Watch out for the story in the coming weeks in ISRAEL21c .

As far as rainfall goes, we now have to wait and see what comes next. As we enter an El Nino year, some people are anticipating a wet winter as rainfall patterns across the world respond to the warmer seas.

The Water Authority is warning us not to get too excited, however. In a recent
Jpost article, Water Authority spokesman, Uri Schor announced that El Nino could also cause an even more severe drought year than the last five.

“We’re on the rim of the El Nino effect and no one knows what it will bring. It could conceivably bring a lot of rain, but it could also bring about a severe drought year. It’s clear what we’re all hoping for,” he said.

Given that the last time we had a rainy winter, the Israeli government slowed work on its desalination projects, setting us back several years, it’s probably not surprising he’s so cautious.

For most Israelis, however, this sudden unexpected downfall was a welcome diversion from the heat, and a chance to enjoy that fresh, clean scent that follows the rain.

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Get your raincoats out, we’re in for a stormy winter

July 14, 2009 - 1:55 PM by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Environment, General, Life 

Well, I may not be a weatherman, or indeed be able to even read a satellite map for that matter, but still I think there’s a good chance that Israel is heading for a rainy winter. No, I didn’t put the seaweed out, and it has nothing to do with aches in assorted parts of my body. It’s because of el Nino.

I came across an article in the international press this morning about how el Nino, a natural meteorological cycle that happens every three to seven years when the Pacific Ocean warms, is making a reappearance this year. Experts are predicting wild weather over the next year, from floods in the US and South America, to droughts in Australia, Africa and Asia.

Interesting, I thought. But what does that mean for Israel? A quick Internet search revealed that in el Nino years, Israel gets more rainfall than usual. In fact, scientists at the Weizmann Institute and the Blaustein Institute for Desert Research had rather handily done a paper on it.

The 1996 study showed that there was a striking correlation between el Nino and above-average rainfall in central Israel over the previous 20 years. The winter of 1991/2, for instance, when Israel experienced the worst rainfall in a century, coincided with one of the most devastating el Nino’s in recent years.

Other years with heavy rainfall included 1997-8, 1986-7, and 1982-3 – all of them el Nino years. The scientists also discovered something else – in La Nina years – where the Pacific ocean cools rather than warms– Israel often experiences its driest years.

So far, this time around, experts are predicting a moderate el Nino, but they are warning that sea temperatures are still rising.

With Israel in possibly the most serious drought of its existence, and a water tax about to go into effect tomorrow or the next day, this can’t be anything but good news. While the rest of the world waits with trepidation to discover just how bad this el Nino will be, we at least appear to have something rather good to look forward to.

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