Rain, water, and Palestine

I'll be writing more on this post soon, but I want to at least let my readers know about the rain we've been having in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Birzeit in the first month that I have been here.

Sleet on the 6th floor window of the Massa Building in Ramallah in the last week of February.


I spoke today to the meteorologist at Birzeit University. He reported that while a typical winter rainfall average is about 600 mm in Birzeit, (in 2006-07 the total was 734 mm and in the following rainy season it was 524 mm) we have 541 mm as of yesterday (March 2, 2009). In just three days last week (February 26-28) we received 109 mm. The February 2009 total is 271 mm.

I will be writing more soon about the importance of rainfall for the area but as you can see this rain in the past month has been very welcome in an area that depends so heavily on rainfall for human consumption and agriculture.