As I wrote in my last post, our water situation here in Israel is becoming more and more serious, but there was a small ray of light over the last few days. We had a huge storm that covered pretty much the entire country, including the most critical area in terms of water management, the Kinneret (often known outside of Israel as the Sea of Galilee). The Kinneret is the main reservoir of fresh water for much of Israel.

It’s still only a drop in the bucket so to speak but it was a pretty big drop … we had over 20 centimeters of rain and snow in the last few days, which goes some small distance towards making this winter not quite so disastrous.

As badly as we need the rain, and as pleased as we all are that we got it, I have to admit that I can’t bear this type of weather. It’s very foggy, cold, and grey, and just generally miserable. I remember that the weather could get this way in Boston too, but it often came with an upside … snow! And that’s something we see very little of here in Israel. The temperature only rarely gets low enough for us to see snow that actually stays on the ground and accumulates, except in our one ski resort, the Hermon.

What, you didn’t know we had a ski resort here? Well, to be honest it’s never going to be a big rival to the fancy resorts in Europe or the United States, but I still find it extraordinary that we have skiing here at all … it is the Middle East after all! But Mount Hermon is an actual real resort, and I’m still hoping that I can find time this season to get up there for a couple of days. I’m not much of a skier, but it is a great deal of fun to be able to go play in the snow.

The only problem is that here in Israel we’re so unused to snow that the Hermon is often closed during an actual  snowstorm … Israeli drivers really can’t be trusted on snowy roads. We have enough lousy driving here on warm dry days. More about Israeli driving in another post perhaps.