Snow falls on Mount Hermon and in Safed
Hermon ski site sees 30 cm on lower level and 60 cm on upper level, but is not yet opened for business; Kinneret level raises 3 centimeters in last 24 hours.
Snow has been falling on and off in the northern Golan Heights from the early morning hours of Friday, with some 5 cm of snow piling up in some places. The snow is expected to continue falling and piling up throughout the day.
New Year's Eve brought snow to Israel's Hermon Mount ski site. The ski site's management reported that 30 centimeters of snow piled up in the lower level and some 60 centimeters in the upper level. However, the site remains closed for skiers at the moment.
"It's white all around here," said site director Liron Mills. "We hope as much snow as possible piles up. We expect snow tomorrow and possibly on Sunday as well. The site will be opened as soon as it's possible."
Snow also fell in the northern Golan Heights but did not pile up. This is expected to change, however, as snow continued falling in Majdal Shams, Kibbutz Ein Zivan and Moshav Alonei HaBashan.
School has been cancelled in Safed and in Kibbutz Sasa in the Upper Galilee, as well as all over the Golan Heights. Light snow started falling in some Safed neighborhoods at higher elevations but has yet to pile up.
A considerable amount of snow is also forecasted to fall in the Galilee Mountains in the coming hours.
Snow plows have been sent to clear Highway 91, Highway 98 and the internal roads between the different communities to prevent them from being blocked.
The chances of snow falling in Jerusalem as slim, but the municipality made preparations to deal with harsh weather conditions that include strong winds of up to 100 kph, intensive rain and low temperatures on the night between Friday and Saturday.
Elsewhere, strong winds and rain caused damages. In Haifa's French Carmel neighborhood, thousands of families lost power after a cellular antenna was blown by the wind and tore a main power line. Residents in Metula and in other areas in northern Israel also experienced power outages.
Israel's main body of sweet water, the Kinneret, hasn't seen a lot of rainfall this winter, but the Water Authority had good news on Friday morning, announcing the water level rose 3 centimeters over the past 24 hours.
All in all, northern Israel saw some 60 millimeters of rain over the past 24 hours, the largest amount of rainfall since the beginning of the rain season.
