White New Year 2015

After the very little rain we got in 2014, it was so wonderful to have it rain exactly to the second, when the clock struck 0:00 hour on 1 January 2015. This was a very positive indication.
The news of an approaching snowstorm, just at the beginning of the year, was additional wonderful news. 2015 made it clear it will be white, right from the very beginning.
As the weather forecast anticipated, Wednesday morning 7 January in Schneller School, like most of Lebanon, was all white. Snow spread its beautiful white mantle on the whole region. Although the temperature was 0°C (Real feel according to AccuWeather -11°C) it was really a wonderful sight. It was pretty cold but certainly absolutely wonderful.
As usually happens in strong snow storms with very fast winds, we lost six big trees, in addition to many broken branches. Miraculously as always, Schneller trees have a perfect fall with no damage to buildings, praise God!
The wood will eventually be put to good use in our carpentry workshop, especially that two of the trees are quite huge.
Going out on Wednesday morning to take some photos was no easy task. It was windy and a mix of ice and snow was falling. The camera got soaked with snow. It was a magnificent walk, on a wonderful day of a year promising to be wonderfully white.
The temperature this storm registered a record low since 2006. On the night of Friday 9 January it registered a low of minus 10.4ºC.
Students were supposed to return form the Christmas holiday on Wednesday 7 January, but we were only able to open school on Monday 19. A lot of work needed to be done before that. We had to rent a snow removal tractor to clear the snow from the main gate to various buildings. The broken trees that blocked access roads inside the school had to be removed. Salt had to be sprinkled to reduce ice buildup every morning which was a big problem. All the pipes that burst even inside concrete walls had to be fixed. Three central heating radiators also cracked and had to be replaced. All the external phone lines of the school were out of order, and they were only fixed on Wednesday 28 January. Most solar hot-water systems were damaged although they were all filled with fresh antifreeze at the beginning of the season. Many students and some teachers and members of staff were only arriving after 10:00 instead of 7:50 AM the first few days because of ice buildup on the roads. There was a lot of damp and water inside many of our buildings which were all bitterly cold having not been heated for over a month.
It took a few days to really get the buildings reasonable warm again. We had to relocate a few classes to other buildings because the heating units (air conditioners) in those classes were not heating efficiently under those extremely cold temperatures.
In spite of all the troubles we faced we can only be thankful for the snow because it replenished our water resources for many years to come. The water shortage problems which our region faced last summer will not be repeated, hopefully, for many years.
Let us hope and pray, that this year will also bring peace to our region, so that the desperate refugees who faced the storm in the open, in bitter cold temperatures, will return home to live in dignity and peace.
Our prayers and thoughts are with those refugees, who only experienced the harshness of the storm rather than its beauty, in addition to facing the brutality of evil people and war.

Check our FaceBook page for more photos and a video of the snow storm.