Talking About Weather in Israel

Sdot Yam, Israel. October 2012Israel is quite a dry country. If you hear people talking about weather issues, it's normally about the luck of rain, the heat during July- August and humidity.
At Optimist Kayaking club, weather conversations are quite common as wind and high waves might be a problem. But once a year the weather is the thing we fear the most.

Every year at about November there is an annual Kayaking Symposium. Guides arrive from various places in the world to teach and kayakers gather to learn as much as they can. Long days in the water, a good chance to improve skills and great energy all around. Bad weather might become a major hassle in a week like that. 
One  would like to have wind on the wind classes, but not too much wind.
One would like no wind for the Greenland rolls classes.
For rescue classes, energetic sea is great.
But no one would like to have rain.

This year the Symposium had perfect weather. The water are about 26 degrees, the sun was there, but not too strong, the wind was there for a short visit, we felt ourselves lucky.
Not a day after the Symposium has ended an impressive thunder storm came for a visit and liked it enough to stick around. It was advertising strong rain for days and finally all hell broke loose on Thursday evening.

Friday morning paddling looked like a group of kids were sent to play in the rain. We were waiting to see what happens with the wind and stood by the sea. It was raining so badly that we run to the warm water to wait and finally boarded our kayaks and went out. The colors were changing by the minute. It was like paddling in a painting.

We felt ourselves lucky once again, to be out in weather like this. And for not having this a week ago…