Where's the Snow?

Last week the weather mavens were predicting with total and utter confidence the "mother of all snowstorms and freezing conditions" in most of Israel from Sunday night. Monday's snow was supposed to be more plentiful than what fell a couple of week's ago.

People were in a total panic, anxiety at its worst, when they heard of below freezing temperatures in the Tel Aviv area, where the only thing that freezes is ice cream and trendy Italian gelato.

Here in Shiloh, we heard and saw Monday's garbage trucks Sunday night. The Beit El yeshiva, a dormitory school, where I teach, dismissed the students at 4:30pm Monday and told them to return on Wednesday.

Well, I heard the rain all last night, and this is what I saw out the window this morning.




I don't see any snow. Do you? The rain has even stopped, at least for long enough for me to take these pictures out the opened window.

Of course, it may be snowing in Beit El and Ofra. Twenty-six years ago, during our first year in Shiloh, on a winter's day like today, my eldest daughter and the other kids too old to study in our fledgling school, were waiting for the van to come and take them to Ofra's school. They waited and waited and waited. No van. We didn't have phones here in those days. Finally, someone got one of the security walkie-talkies and contacted Ofra.

"School? There's no school when it snows!!"