Snow in Jerusalem

Well, we knew it was coming. Yesterday the wind and rain were coming hard and it was very cold. Take a look at this picture of our balcony this summer:

The wind was blowing so hard yesterday that it kept blowing our patio furniture around the balcony. When my husband got home from work I told him that it had been blowing around and I thought we better secure it somehow. He got all bundled up and went outside to take care of it, but promptly came back in and asked, "Where's the table?" We had a sinking feeling in our stomach as he went to the edge of the balcony and looked down. Sure enough, the wind had picked up our table and sent it flying over the 4-ft. rail of our 3rd story balcony, into the neighbor's yard. This is what's left of it; now lying in our front hallway.

We are so glad that no one or thing was hurt by our flying patio furniture.

This morning we woke up to snow on the ground. As the sun started to rise the snow quickly changed into a slushy mess. All day I tried to get a good picture of the snow to post; but most of my day looked like this:

I wasn't about to open my door or window for a picture, so this will have to do! It rained sleet all day. Eventually our balcony started flooding with about 3 inches of water. The drain was clogged with debris and ice. On top of that, the heating units are on our balcony and they were all frozen, and had to be turned off. So now we were inside our house all bundled up, trying not to freeze. My husband finally got home about 2:00 and came to our rescue. He had been at work all day and had to drive through the slushy streets of Jerusalem, but as soon as he got home he took care of all our problems.

Here he is, out in the cold, trying to scrape the ice off one of the heating units. You can't see it in the picture, but he didn't have any gloves, and he's using a sharp metal object, so you know he couldn't have been comfortable.

Thank you, sweetie!
By this time the rain had stopped for a few minutes so I grabbed a picture of the city.

Not much snow is left on the ground, but it's supposed to snow all night and tomorrow, so there may be more pictures in the near future.