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Saturday, February 27, 2010

The Hail Storm - Revisited

UPDATE: 2/28/2010
The results of the hailstorm from three days ago were still visible today alongside the road from the Pyramids to October 6 City where these two vehicles had been involved in a crash. The vehicle carcasses remained alongside the road. It appeared that the smaller van-like local bus on the left had been rear-ended by the larger bus on the right.



That thunder and lightning I posted about the other night got everyone's attention.

According to this report from the AFP:

Four people were killed and more than 50 hurt as bad weather wreaked havoc across Egypt, pelting the capital with a freak hail storm and smashing a luxury liner into a pier, officials and media said Friday.

In the northern Mediterranean city of Alexandria, waves as high as a two-storey building pounded the coast, media reports said.

Thursday evening’s hail storm in Cairo, the first in many years, caused mayhem in the capital, snarling traffic and bringing the sprawling city to a virtual standstill.

Maybe it was good that we had returned from Alexandria early Thursday morning!

Local folks had varying experiences. Some thought it might be the end of the world. On the other hand, that AFP report said, "Tourists near the Giza Pyramids, on the outskirts of the capital, ducked for cover from the frozen, marble-sized pellets." We also heard that locals near the pyramids were running out to catch some hailstones.

In fact, one of our friends living near the pyramids gathered up a bag of hailstones and put them in his freezer.


Many people thought that they had experienced snow. Some of them thought we had brought the snow here. Fortunately, we have an English-Arabic dictionary that contains the word for hail, (barad.) We explained that snow is very gentle.

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