Winter Arrives with Dangerous Winds

Our winter has arrived with heavy rains, hail and even snow within Mount Hermon.  Yet, a big part of the weather story tomorrow should be the winds. Wednesday afternoon should see quite strong winds — with Gale force gusts. Otherwise, we’re in for a cold and rainy two week period.

People have been asking me if it will indeed snow, like we surmised it might a few weeks ago. However, to quote Mr. Darcy of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, I feared that your “good opinion once lost, is lost forever.” Hence, I was very hesitant to say “yes it would” or “no it won’t” when so much literally remained up in the air.

In the last week we’ve grown excited and then less so. We’ve had energetic and passionate discussions within our “Israel Winter Weather” group. Actually, my contribution is mostly in producing very high resolution forecasts to better predict snow amounts. Alas, I’ve watched the other two members excitedly display the latest global forecasts, to grow excited and then disappointed, and now disappointed again.

Due to the evolution of low pressure systems many thousands of kilometers away, it appears that the coldest air associated with a wave-like ridge trough couplet will simply remain too far to our north. Just when the ridge pushes up into western Europe and cold air plunges down from Siberia, the ridge will bend eastward and push the coldest air away to our east.

True, it will be chilly, and there will remain chances for snow over the next two weeks, but at the moment all we can expect is some rain mixed with snow in the higher elevations around Jerusalem and areas to the north Wednesday night into Thursday. Our hope for snow early next week seems to have also melted away in the onslaught of other worldly weather events.

Here, though, we’re having our own non related weather storms. To allow Mr. Deri to serve as a Minister the government will pass a basic law stating that the court system cannot rule on the reasonableness of the Prime Minister’s choice of Ministers. But, really, they’re allowing a person who promised not to return to politics in exchange for a suspended sentence to be a minister to do just that. In other words, our government will place a person in charge of important ministries with huge budgets who has not only stolen and bribed his way through life, but is now lying to secure his new ministry positions.

Otherwise, the government’s effort to push through judicial reform (really evisceration) without any consensus is akin to the Rabin government passing the Oslo Accords also without such consensus. This led to massive unrest and alienated a large part of the population. I truly believe that when one political side in a democracy steamrolls the other side in matters such as this, you end up with dissatisfaction and anger that leads to violence. Remember, the Jewish people fought among themselves prior to the destruction of the Second Temple. Our enemies must be only hoping our internal discord and divisiveness will only fester and grow. After all, they know Jewish history as well, even if they deny we ever had a temple in the first place.