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Mohammed Ballas / AP
Palestinians cross a road flooded and swept away by heavy rains in the northern West Bank village of Kabatyeh, on Jan. 9. A Palestinian official says the fiercest storm to hit the area in a decade has claimed the lives of two West Bank women who drowned after their car was caught in a flash flood unleashed by torrential rains.
AMMAN, Jordan -- The fiercest winter storm to hit the Mideast in years has unleashed deadly flash flooding in the West Bank, dumped a rare foot of snow on the desert in Jordan and disrupted traffic on the Suez Canal in Egypt.
The unusual weather was a particularly harsh blow for the vulnerable Syrian refugees, especially about 50,000 sheltering in the Zaatari tent camp in Jordan's northern desert. Torrential rains over the past four days have flooded 200 tents and forced women and infants to evacuate their tents in temperatures below freezing at night, whipping wind and lashing rain.
"It's been freezing cold and constant rain for the past four days," lamented Ahmad Tobara, 44, who evacuated his tent when its shafts submerged in flood water in Zaatari camp.
In the West Bank town of Ramallah, a Palestinian official said on Wednesday two West Bank women drowned after their car was caught in a flash flood a day earlier. Nablus Deputy Governor Annan Atirah said the women abandoned their vehicle after it got stuck on a flooded road and their bodies were found apparently swept away by surging waters. Their driver was hospitalized in critical condition.
The storm dumped at least a foot of snow on many parts of Jordan, shutting schools, stranding motorists and delaying international flights, Jordanian weatherman Mohammed Samawi said. He called it the "fiercest storm to hit the Mideast in the month of January in at least 30 years."
Muhammad Hamed / Reuters
Men play in the snow after a heavy snowstorm in Amman on Jan. 9. Snowstorm and heavy rains caused the closure of main streets in the capital Amman and other cities over the past two days.
The rare, heavy snowfall blocked all streets in Jordan's capital, Amman, and isolated remote villages, prompting warnings from authorities for people to stay home as snow ploughs tried to reopen clogged roads. The country's Meteorology Department said the storm, accompanied by lashing wind, lightning and thunder, dumped the most snow in northern regions and some parts of usually arid southern Jordan.
The snowstorm followed four days of torrential rain, which caused flooding in many areas across the country.
In Egypt, torrential rains, strong winds and low visibility disrupted Suez Canal operations over the past three days and also closed down several ports. The number of ships moving through the Suez Canal dropped by half because of poor visibility, the official MENA news agency reported. A canal official said that by Wednesday, operations had returned to normal. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters.
PhotoBlog: On the move again, Syrian refugees flee flooding
MENA also reported that ports in the northern Mediterranean city of Alexandria and Dakhila were shut down, while cities in the Nile Delta suffered power outages and fishing stopped in cities like Damietta, northeast of Cairo.
MENA also reported ten fishermen went missing after their boat capsized near Marsa Matrouh on the Mediterranean.
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As sea levels rise, the salinity changes cause the deep ocean currents to change course and rate, this leads to changes in the surface temperature which, in turn, causes the air above to change temperature then the winds change course and we wonder why China has the coldest temps on record, there is snow in the desert and Chicago has never had a season with as little snow as this year...We are all connected and the sooner we understand that the better. It may already be too late for millions, wait, that may not be such a bad thing. What is the carring capacity of the world? I know the Republicans will say that if I don't like it here I should leave. Ha!
It's happened before....it will happen again. Nothing new here.
"In the West Bank town of Ramallah, a Palestinian official said on Wednesday two West Bank women drowned after their car was caught in a flash flood a day earlier."
This is a Zionist conspiracy!
How can this rare thing happen?
Or Allah must be furious with these people.
UN and agencies must jump in there and make some money!
HA!!! of course it is!!!
thanks for the LOL, Jonathan. ☺
NEA Exec.
Are you talking about these sea level INCREASES???
The longest running sea-level measurements are recorded at Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, beginning in 1700.[38] Since 1850, the rise averaged 1.5 mm/year (about 0.060")...
Records dating from 1843 Australian data taken by an amateur meteorologist at the Port Arthur convict settlement, when merged with data recorded by modern tide gauges, indicated sea level rise of about 1 mm a year (about 0.040").[39]
Global average sea level rose at an average rate of around 1.7 ± 0.3 mm per year from 1950 to 2009 and at a satellite-measured average rate of about 3.3 ± 0.4 mm per year from 1993 to 2009,[5] an increase on earlier estimates.[6]
This satellite-measurement accuracy is still in question due to their very short data period and the many other factors that influence these measurements. Most satellite data is verified by direct measurements, prior to its adoption as FACT...
If you do not understand how these data bases are constructed and what effects the sea level measurements. ie - Continental rebound, tectonic plate movements, atmospheric conditions, limited numbers of data points/periods covered, etc...
Minimum temperature records being set for Vostok Station, Antartica with -89.2 °C lowest sense the 1850s...
Antarctic sea ice set another record this past week, with the most amount of ice ever recorded on day 256 of the calendar year (September 12 of this leap year)...
Antarctic sea ice has been growing since satellites first began measuring the ice 33 years ago and the sea ice has been above the 33-year average throughout 2012...
Now you want to talk about the record snow coverage during the winter of 2011/12 in the Northern Hemisphere or the record low temperatures producing Ozone Holes, in BOTH the Arctic & Antarctic???
Europe was gripped by a severe freeze. Temperatures as low as minus 22C (-8F) have left 122 dead in Poland this winter, while in central Norway temperatures plummeted to minus 41C (-42F) on Wednesday. Temperatures in England dropped to minus 17C (1F) on Thursday and virtually the whole of the UK is covered in snow. Continuing the record making snow & cold temperatures of the last few years...
In India the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, where New Delhi is located, has seen record cold temperatures. Temperatures in New Delhi fell to a low of 35.4 degrees on Jan. 6 and the high temperature on Jan. 2 was 49.6, the coldest daily maximum in 44 years...
Thailand has declared several if its Northern & North Eastern (Isan) provinces cold weather disaster areas...
China has been experiencing record breaking (30+year); low temperatures, snow coverage and frozen harbors for the last few years... see #
I started the 'circulation' thoughts by refering to changes in sea salinity, the effect of disrupting the thermohaline state (due to loss of terestrial glaciers. See; http://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/oceanography/physical-ocean/salinity/
As someone here said, better adjust..or die.
JONATHAN AND CHEFAZ.. you both are pathetic and distasteful. it is amazing how you israelis have to politicize everything . not worth it to go any further with this discussion. .oh perhaps your god is giving you a hint not to build in other peoples land or this is what he will do.
The winter storms have spread havoc all across- flooding and snowing to areas which are not too accustomed to cope with Mother Nature. The fate of the Syrians (non-combatants inside Syria) is more than deplorable- the fate of Syrian refugees outside Syria is dire too. Turkey- it is snowing and there have been fires inside tent cities- the luckiest refugees are the Syrian refugees- 2823 people whom Turkey deported by vessel route from Iskenderun Port to Port Said,Egypt since navigation started in April,2012. What is not reported yet in US is the prisoner exchange in Syria - 2130 prisoners in Syria (g'ment) exchanged for 48 Iranians held by rebels- it is still ongoing. (http://france24.com/en/20130109-Syria-government-release-thousands-prisoner-exchange)
We need to adapt and take advantage of these climatic changes - it can be done.
Couldn't happen in a more appropriate place.
I agree. It should clean as many people as possible!
well perhaps if the southern US, the trailer park republicans like you two could sure use a bath, you stink of bigoty and racism.
So your despicable bigotry towards Republicans and people who live in trailer parks is somehow righteous? The most despicable;e bigots on earth are the haters known as Progressives. No wonder that the 2 most well known leftists in history, Stalin and Mao, murdered a combined 80 million people. By the way my Cornell and Harvard educated father, an Obama voter, lives in a trailer park. He thinks its wasteful for one person to live in a larger abode, or use up more land for a large yard. You sir are garbage.
LOL you are a funny guy skibum609, sayiing someone is a trailerpark republican is not demeaning towards people who live in trailer parks, it is simply a way of describing the non-one percenter republicans. My first home was in a trailer park, I bought an 8x45 1955 trailer the day I turned 18, lived in it for 3 years next to some very nice drug addicts in the late 1970's. Actually most trailer parks have a nicer class of people than most apartment complexs.
As for your harvard educated father living in a trailer court, I don't believe that for one minute.
And the only people progressives are "bigoted" against are conservatives, mainly because of the constant barrage of hate towards us spewing from conservatives.
Mother Nature is Pissed !
OHHHH, that Mideast
The one usually called Middle East
Middle East in middle ages desert days mindset!
Maybe God is trying to tell them something in Syria, like KNOCK IT OFF! But then again it could be just global warming!
Mankind survived the last ice age that ended roughly 12000 years ago...ice is still receding...seas are still rising...and we will have more ice ages in the future as the natural cycles of the EARTH repeat themselves over and over...this is not a curse by GOD!...when man fades away from this old planet;so will the worshiping of DIETIES!
If you look at th temperature data from the Vostok, Antarctica ice cores and other ice cores from Greenland. They depict the earths temperature averages that now cover almost 1+million years (8+cycles)...
The ice ages are averaging about 120+thousands years apart...
For the last 12+thousand years the earths temperatures averages have been DECREASING... see graph -
BTY - The graph data is depicted from current levels to over 120,000+years ago (left to right)...
God doesn't punish or curse individuals or nations in this matter. A little more Bible reading and you'll find out
why suffering and disasters happen. Try to look further.
Even though, Religous leaders say that God is punishing
that's not true.
how many seconds before they blame the snow on Israel?
If anyone from NBC.com is reading this and really cares ... while the info in this story is correct, how is it that the flooding situation in the "West Bank" are reported, but there isn't a single mention of Israel, and facts such as that the main highway in Tel Aviv was shut down under deep water, that some folk had to be evacuated to shelters, etc. ... It's almost as if Israel isn't part of the Middle East. Shame on you, NBC.com.
Israel should be honored not to be included with those savage arab nations.
This being a Progressive website they are under an executive order to ignore anything bad that happens to Israel because...well I am a human being and not a Progressive so I have no clue.
It's an AP story from MENA out of Jordan. NBC picked it up and reposted it. Of course it isn't going to mention Israel.