While senior forecaster Robert Dulinsky reports on Sunday morning there is no rain in the coming week’s forecast, Gedolei HaDor Shlita are calling for continued tefillos for rain as the nation finds itself in another drought year, a year in which recorded rainfall is the lowest since the state began recording rainfall data.
 
Making matters worse is the fact that the drought year is preceded by a number of below-average-rainfall winters which have taken the Kinneret, Eretz Yisrael’s primary drinking water source, to a critical level. Experts explain that if we do not see an abundance of rainfall in the remaining winter months, pumping from the Kinneret will have to be halted or risk the irreversible contamination of the water body as a result of salination.
 
While some areas this year have seen 60-70% of an average annual rainfall, this same cannot be said in the area of the Kinneret where water levels continue to decline.

(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)