Power outages throughout the country; snow flurries spread to Jerusalem
City offers free public transport after 7 to keep drivers off the road; 2 Palestinian women die as car gets caught in flash flood
By
Power outages throughout the country; snow flurries spread to Jerusalem
2013. január 9 19:12
As night falls in Jerusalem, the snow starts accumulating on the ground. Alon Diamant-Cohen, a resident of Jerusalem’s Armon Hanatziv neighborhood, publishes a photo of the thickening blanket of white on the streets.
Times of Israel writer Gabe Fisher reports from the southern Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo that there is enough snow on the ground to build a (diminutive but adorable) snowman.
Two teams of firefighters rescue two adults and two children whose jeep was swept away by rushing torrents of water near the Beit Zayit dam in Ein Kerem, outside Jerusalem. The trapped passengers of the vehicle were on the roof of the jeep when they were rescued.
A minibus carrying teens near the town of Betzet in the western Galilee collides on Route 899 with a car, moderately injuring the driver of the bus and lightly injuring the teens therein. The driver is taken to the nearby hospital in Nahariya, and the road is closed to traffic.
Térkép
Műhold
Israel’s Chief Rabbinate issues a special prayer of thanksgiving for the bountiful rains that have flooded the country and caused hundreds of millions of shekels in damage.
Evoking imagery employed in the Biblical story of Noah, the blessing reads: “With joy and elation we are happy that the Lord opened the floodgates of the heavens and bestowed on his people and his land the gift of blessed rains.”
The rabbinate also notifies on its website that the kosher slaughterer certification exam has been postponed due to the inclement weather.
It’s the rainiest winter Israel’s had in years, and the water level in the Sea of Galilee, Israel’s main source of freshwater, is on the rise.
Over the past four days, the Sea of Galilee’s water level swelled by 38 centimeters, bringing it to 270 centimeters below its upper red line marker — 208.9 meters below sea level — the point at which Degania Dam is opened to allow an increased flow into the Jordan River and prevent the lake from flooding the city of Tiberias and other towns along its coast.
Last month, the water level rose by its highest amount for a December since 1994.
