Saturday, March 30, 2019

Crossing The Red Line - R2BC

The weather and DD's school play are my reasons 2B cheerful this week. The linky is still with Becky on Lakes Single Mum as we see out the month of March.

1
School Play
DD was a monkey in her school play. She told me, "I only have two lines but I exaggerate them. She was great!

The play was a joint project with students from Nissan Nativ - a film and drama school in Jerusalem (like Rada). Kobi Marimi, our Eurovision entrant, went there. Unfortunately he has graduated and had nothing to do with DD's school play.

2
The Red Lines
We've had the rainiest winter following a five year drought. Not no rain, but very little and not in the north, in areas that feed The Kinneret (Sea of Galilee - not a sea at all but rather a largish lake, smaller than Lake Geneva for example). When we went there in the summer it was a good walk down to the water, over what had once been the rocky sea bed. It was very sad. And two islands have appeared where once there were no islands. However, this year the lake has filled up to above the Lower Red Line for the first time in two years.

There are two red lines. The Upper Red Line, set at 208.8 m below sea level, is full capacity and they open the Deganya Dam to send the excess down the Jordan River to the Dead Sea (also not a sea and now two distinct lakes :( ). The last time they did this was in 2013 following spring flooding and a need to replenish the Jordan River. This is something I would love to see again but it won't be this year.

The Lower Red Line is the point at which they are supposed to stop pumping water as any lower causes ecological damage and the water quality deteriorates. There is 4.2 metres between the two lines and we are only at about 1 metre above the Lower Red Line.

We need to be a good two meters above the Lower Red Line in order to stay above it for the duration of the summer as 1 cm per day can evaporate in the hot weather. Apparently there's still lots of snow on Mt Hermon to melt and, amazingly, it's still raining - with another storm expected this week! I check on the level daily. I'm a bit nerdy like that.

I have to mention that there is also a Black Line, 1.87 m below the Lower Red Line, which is below the pipes so you couldn't pump even if you wanted to. This is also the historical minimum. When things get this dangerous they plan to pump sea water from the Mediterranean into The Kinneret. But we absolutely don't want to go there again!

There's something exciting about heavy rain in springtime because you know the summer is coming so you don't get depressed thinking that this is the situation for the next three months. I intend to enjoy every minute of what could be the final storm this year. 

  

5 comments:

  1. Great to see DD dressed up again, she must be more comfortable wearing costumes now?

    As for rain, I'm a fan of it most of the time, preferable April showers with sunshine and skidding clouds in between - in fact typical Irish weather. Also because droughts are horrible and scary, so I'm glad your water supply is being replenished x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. She wasn't actually comfortable with all the gunk on her face but as they were dressed at school there was no chance that she might have got it wrong and made a fool of herself. And thank you, we are happy about the rain too.

      Delete
  2. Wish we could send you some of our rain AND SNOW!! I met friends for dinner last night and it was pouring - but as I was headed home I could tell the temperature was dropping again and sure enough I had to dig out my boots again this morning - it has continued to snow off and on all day and it is coming down quite heavily again right now! The river that runs next to my building is running fast and is quite deep - almost ready to overflow into one of the park's parking lots and there are warnings out for anyone walking near water for the next few days to be extra careful.
    I hope you get enough rain so that water levels stay at an optimum level for you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Margie. It's still raining here but no more rain predicted after today for at least the next week. I stayed at home today as most of my lessons were cancelled due to various other school events. So I'm loving it even more from the warm indoors.

      Delete
  3. You made some decent points there. I looked on the internet
    for the subject matter and found most people will agree with your website.

    ReplyDelete