Funny how a storm announces itself long before the real thunder arrives. Sometimes it’s not the sky you notice first but the small casualties scattered at your feet. This crumpled blue umbrella—splayed out like a defeated bird against the concrete—pretty much sums up the mood as Byron sweeps across the coastal plain. The fabric is slick with fresh rain, puddled in odd folds, and bits of fallen leaves cling to it as if the wind pressed them there on its way through. You can almost imagine the moment it gave up: one rough gust, maybe two, and then someone quietly abandoning the battle and walking off into the downpour without looking back.
The storm itself is settling in exactly where the forecasts warned. Through the morning hours, Gush Dan sits squarely under the heaviest rain, the kind that turns gutters into streams and makes you rethink crossing the street. Dr. Amir Givati laid it out cleanly: from morning until around noon, Tel Aviv and the surrounding area sit at the center of the rainfall, and after midday the system slides southward toward Rehovot, Ashdod, and Ashkelon. Flooding is almost a given in the usual trouble spots—the low roads, the underpasses, those tight corners where water always seems to gather faster than logic says it should.
What makes Byron feel a bit more relentless is that today isn’t the end of it. The storm peaks during the day, yes, but it lingers right through Friday, trailing pockets of rain behind it and keeping the air heavy with that damp chill that settles into your sleeves. Temperatures hover in that in-between zone: Jerusalem sits around 10–12°C, Tel Aviv 13–16°C, Haifa 13–17°C. Up north, Safed dips to 9–11°C while Tiberias and Beit She’an stretch closer to 16–17°C. Along the coast and through the center—Lod, Ashdod—the range wavers between 13 and 18°C. And in the south, the desert tries to shrug off the cold a bit: Beersheba reaches 17°C, Mitzpe Ramon a brisk 8–14°C, and Eilat, ever the outlier, warms to around 20°C.
Days like this have their own rhythm. The sky pushes, the wind rearranges what it wants, and even a forgotten umbrella becomes a small, soggy emblem of a storm that’s only just getting started.
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