Palestine Climate

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 12, 1885

Palestine Climate.

A WRITER in a London journal says that snow rarely falls in Palestine. Now and then the highlands of the country are the scene of a snow-storm, but this is not a frequent occurrence. There have, of course, been occasional visitations of winter when the weather has been exceptionally severe. Thus in 1854 there were heavy falls of snow at Galilee, and, in the neighborhood of Nazareth, twenty-five people were frozen to death. In the same year so much snow fell during one night at Jerusalem that it was impossible to gather together a “Minyan” the next morning, although it was one of the festivals. There is an inscription on an old and half-ruined house in Galilee which runs as follows: “Wonder not at snow in Nisan; we have seen it in Sivan.” Hail is much more common in the Holy Land than snow, but it is not of a serious kind, and rarely does any damage even to fruit, which is more easily injured than any other crop.