Thursday, January 17, 2019

Snow, Just a Puff of Wishful Thinking

For the past few days, the Israeli media was full of supposed "pre-snow" warnings. You'd think we were in for a major blizzard. The "snowplow" workers, salters, media yappers etc were all put on "snow alert" at who know how many times their normal salary to be ready for the deluge of white to blanket the roads, lawns and more.

last night's hail on the steps to my house
To my experienced, though untrained mind, the forecasts weren't predicting snow, just winds and hail. And to be perfectly honest, that's what we really got. The round little ice balls you can see in the picture on the right are hail, not snow. For snow the temperature must be an actual freezing minus, not a few degrees more, or just "wind chill factor" or "feels like."

It's that "chaos" of winds, when it feels much colder than it actually is, that cause/form hail. Hail, like you can see in the photo, are ice balls. Yes, those ice balls on roads can be very dangerous, more dangerous than dry snowflakes, which if not piled high, quickly melt under hot moving cars and their wide tires.

Between the strong winds and hail, being on the roads last night wasn't a good idea for small cars especially. And I ended up missing my granddaughter's performance in Ofra, which had me very upset and disappointed.

late last night

early this morning
This year's winter isn't over yet, and considering that some of our deepest and most long-lasting snows have fallen in the month of Adar, even around Purim, we still have a chance. Not that I want it to snow. I'd rather continue with rainy nights and sunny days.

2 comments:

Ed Greenberg said...

We are execting 12-24 inches here in Saratoga Springs NY. I could send you some if you like :)

Batya said...

No, thanks, I can happily live without any snow. Stay warm