Jerusalem’s holy sites and West Bank carpeted in rare snow

A rare heavy snowfall covered Jerusalem, some of northern Israel and hilly areas in the occupied West Bank overnight into Thursday, shutting down roads and schools.

Worshippers had to trudge through inches of snow to reach the holy sites in Jerusalem’s walled Old City, including the snow-capped Dome of the Rock and the Western Wall.

A general view of Jerusalem after a snowstorm, as seen from the Mount of Olives, shows the Dome of the Rock, located in Jerusalem’s Old City on the compound known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount, January 27, 2022. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

Heavy snow is rare in the city, so children went out into the streets to watch the flakes falling and hurl snowballs at each other.

Abed Shabany, 39, took his two sons to play on a hill overlooking Jerusalem. As he reversed his Jeep through inches of slush, other parents kept themselves warm brewing coffee on gas canisters in their boots.

“I haven’t seen anything like this for years,” he said. “There’s no school today so I’m just going around with the kids making snowmen and snowballs. I think it’s a good sign. It will be a good year, I hope.”

Municipality cherry-pickers were out in the city centre, sawing off broken and dangerous branches, with much less traffic on the roads than usual.

***An aerial view shows Jerusalem’s Old City covered in snow, January 27, 2022. REUTERS/Ammar Awad***

Police closed off several main highways leading to Jerusalem, and bus services inside the city were suspended.

Throughout the night, 210 snow ploughs worked to clear the city streets, Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion told Israel Army Radio on Thursday morning. The snow piled up to a height of about 20 centimeters (8 inches), according to Israeli media.

Thousands of fish die from thermal shock in Greece

Before arriving in Jerusalem, the winter storm swept through the Mediterranean region, from Greece across Turkey and into Syria. Countries across the region have been hit by a rare cold snap, including in Athens which was blanketed in snow.

***Fish farm cultivator Ioannis Ouzounoglou collects fish that died from low temperatures, at his fish farm in Richo lagoon, in Igoumenitsa, Greece, January 26, 2022. REUTERS/Giannis Floulis***

In a lagoon in northwestern Greece hundreds of thousands of farmed fish have died from cold after a heavy snowstorm crippled the country. The dead fish, seabream and white seabream, began to emerge on the surface of the Richo Lagoon of Drepano Lake early on Tuesday after temperatures in the water dropped to as low as zero degrees Celsius.

The fish’s enclosure in the farm in the lagoon prevented them from swimming out to the deeper waters of the lake or sea to survive, scientist Konstantinos Perdikaris from the Department of Fisheries said.

The destruction is huge, it is estimated there are around 50 tonnes of dead fish because of thermal shock. (Reuters)