March Comes In

like a lion......

It was nice to get out of the city and into the Jerusalem hills for the weekend. The roses on Moshav Kisalon where blooming and the jackals at dusk were ‘yucking it up’. When the jackals begin their howling it always sounds to me like a fraternity party gone wrong, very wrong. They’ve moved a little closer to the house since I’ve been away which makes for an ever more jovial few minutes.

On Sunday I went with my friend to a homeschooler’s get together in Lehi. The weather was very strange, to me at least. It was hot but the air looked very cloudy. Visibility was extreme low which made seeing the Jerusalem hills just a figment in my imagination.

It’s sharav or khamsin weather in Israel. During the spring, and winter too, very hot, dry winds blow in from the desert, usually from the east. What makes the visibility so low is that the winds bring sand with them. And, lot’s of it. In my mind I wanted to make this sheet of white before me fog, but it just wasn’t.

Sharav is the Hebrew word for these winds and in Arabic it’s Khamsin. As my friend predicted, the sharav broke the next day with lots of wind which cleared the air with a moist, cool, misty air flow. There will be more sharav’s to follow. Khamsin means 50 in Arabic and some speculate that there will be 50 days of Khamsin.

My very inexperienced assessment….this one was not bad.