This time it was chillingly WHITE. The population
of Jerusalem and surrounding areas braced themselves for the arrival of an
unforgiving blanket of SNOW.
Last year we were totally unprepared - many of
us suffered electricity cuts and worse. Our cousins flew in from abroad in the
middle of last year’s snow storm. They managed to get a taxi at Ben
Gurion which took seven hours to drive towards Jerusalem, but then when the
driver was about 4 kilometers from the city he stopped and said he could go no
further. It was now 4am. My cousins had to take their luggage and walk for
two hours to try to get closer to Jerusalem and home. Needless to say they
were traumatized.
This year however the papers have been full of the
extra care that the authorities are taking. So much so that on Wednesday
morning, three days before even one flake of snow had fallen, the two main
highways into Jerusalem were closed to traffic.
Residents were exhorted to take emergency measures.
First: buy a shovel. Second: stockpile food and water supplies for at least
three days. Third: because of expected strong winds we were urged to secure and
tie down anything, or presumably anyone, that might take flight and injure passersby such
as plant pots on balconies.
All educational establishments were closed -
nursery schools, training colleges and universities. The Justice Ministry shut
down the courts for the interim and there was little or no public transport. The
place became a ghost town.
Drivers were requested politely not to abandon
their cars on the Light Railway Line in the city. City Pass, who runs
the rail line, said that that there would be no services once the snow
reached 5cms. I imagined a small army of men with tape measures at the
ready trying to determine when that level was reached.
City Pass said that the rail service would only be
resumed once the offending 5cms was removed. But no one needed to worry,
customers were reassured that all conductors would be specially trained to
evacuate the passengers from the carriages under such circumstances.
But it was not all gloom and doom. One
enterprising hotel in the city offered accommodation for three nights “ A first
of its kind initiative’ - come and experience the snow first hand, and if there
is no snow there is no charge." I would like to know what their criteria
were for ‘snow’. Mostly what we saw was grey, wet slush, with perhaps
a dusting of grey/white on some roof tiles. Did that constitute snow -
and would I have had to pay the room charge on that basis?
I would have felt very cheated if I had been
offered anything less than half a meter of the sparkly white stuff, the sun
shining, snowmen and snowballs at the ready.
So this year we saw the local authority taking measures to ensure
that there was no repetition of what happened last year. The only
difference this year is that in spite of all the predictions there was
virtually no snow on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday - it only started to fall on
l and then had cleared completely by noon the next day. This was a great
disappointment for all the children of the city, but one thing they can take
satisfaction in was the storms that we heard. I have never before
experienced snow falling at the same time as massive thunder and
lightning. It could only be described as being of truly biblical
proportions, which I guess is a suitable description for something that
happens in our city.
