The Aftermath

Of course, the Aftermath of the snow storm. However, you may like to know the origins of the word "Aftermath"; originally meant "the grass that grows after the first crop of hay has been taken", from an old word "math", meaning to mow

Commonly, on the other hand, it is used to descirbe what happens after

-Queen Alia Amman international Airport was closed all night and was reopened this morning at 9:30 (so my wife can arrive from Dubai today)

-Wide spread freezing after the temperature dropped to below zero during the night

-36 hours of now caused at least 40cm of accumulation in areas like west Shemisani (around 940 M above sea level)

- temperature now At 11 am IS 2.1 degrees.

- bitter cold tonight (-4) with more freezing and hazardous driving conditions

- All businesses , government etc are closed for the second day in a row

- The low pressure system has moved to to the east and we are under the remaining front. Skies will become partly cloudy, some snow flurries every now and then.

-Temperature on the rise tomorrow and Saturday to reach again seasonal average

-Humidity is still high (90%)

-Atmospheric presure is on the rise,, actually has risen by 10 mb since last night confirming the end of the storm

-This storm was marked by high winds all through due to the low value of the atmospheric pressure the prevailed during the storm


-Main roads are open, but one should exercise extreme caution, inner roads are almost close and I do not recommend driving at inner roads without 4x4, as you are bound to get stuck and hamper the efforts of others who have emergencies.

- Have not heard of major accidents, power loss, except on the personal level, i am running out of food supplies! But i will resolve the issue this afternoon

- The fun part is over, the ugly part of melting snow, slippery conditions, cold evening and depressing scenery of dirty snow remians.


The following are pictures that i took this morning from the window of my home











Note the frozen water drops on the left bottom side of the picture indicating the sub zero temperatures

Snow and More snow

It started snowing in Amman after mid night.

This morning, it is bilizard like conditions and still snowing. Unlike last week, it is going to be difficult to get to the office. It seems i will resume work through my VPN.

Snow is to resume at noon, when another cold front will sweep the area

Weather map

Tuesday map

Big weather system -- watch out

(picture on the left is taken last Tuesday)

It seems like a big weather system is coming to the Eastern Med. Deep low pressure system accompanied with really high winds (in excess of 90Km/hour).

The effect of this system shall start tomorrow evening and intensify on Tue, where snow is expected in all Areas. I will not miss it inshalla, as i m leaving oman tomorrow morning to Amman skipping a 48 scheduled stop over in Dubai.

Last time i was in Oman was early this year, the only noticeble change is more Traffic , as every where else in this world.

Is it logical to turn on A/C in Jan

Yes, if you are in muscat.
I left Amman, and it was bitter cold, i arrived at Muscat at around 3 AM, and the outside temperature in the Airport was 20 C. I arrived at the hotel, it was kind of discomfortably warm. Tried to sleep, but to no avail , until the AC unit was turned on.

above freezing snow! is it a myth or reality

It is a reality, and it happened Yesterday!! Yesterday morning, It was snowing like crazy, when my thermometer was well above freezing (around 4 degrees C).

This seems against everything we learned in science classes when we were taught that snow melts when the temperature rises above Zero C (or 32 F). How then did we witness snow?

The naive answer is that snow start melting indeed but it did not have enough time to completely melt before it reached the ground. That is partially true, but this is not what happened yesterday!! Yesterday the upper atmosphere was cold and wet, so snow formed. The lower layers were dry with temperature above freezing. The catch here is DRY, while snow is following, it started melting. Now water of course, has a good tendency to evaporate, The evaporation is falling snow took place at higher rates than normal due to the dryness of the lower levels of the atmosphere. To transfer melting snow from liquid state to vapor state, energy is required. This energy is taken from snow crystals themselves, so the energy within the snow flake becomes less, and henceforth, its temperature goes down. What are we having here:-

The atmosphere is warm enough to cause snow to melt; the atmosphere is dry enough to cause evaporation of melting snow; energy is required for evaporation,. This energy is taken from snow crystals causing them to cool down. If the evaporation rate is just right, the temperature of the snow crystal drops back to zero and the crystal maintains its freezing state. The crystal is at Zero temperature, and the atmosphere is above zero, therefore, snow keeps falling because it is still at zero temperature regardless of the fact that its surrounding is really above zero.

Summary, when the atmosphere is above freezing and the wind is dry, snow flake can keep falling. There is a formula that tells you for at what temperature snow can still fall at what humidity level. In fact, and based on such formula, snow can still fall at temperature of as high as 8 degrees when the humidity is 20% . Interesting, isn't

Fairy Tale wedding ends before it started

"We decided to remain friends", fairly common statement and it was the statement that Eddie Murphy and Tracey Edmonds made two weeks after they got wed at Bora Bora Island in French Polynesia on Jan. 1, 2008. If this incident took place in conservative countries like the middle east, i could imagine what reasons are entailed, but knowing Eddie, no, i do not believe that this is what he was expecting from a 40 year movie star. Otherwise, he would have chosen the virgin islands for the ceremony and not Bora Bora!

9/11, the truth

A truely informative web site http://www.ae911truth.org/ Architects and Engineer give scientific evidents that the 3 buildings that collapsed in 9/11 could not be due the Airplane crash. Rather these engineers believe that it was rather controlled demolition!!!!!!!!

ammar sajdi

So you think you can shoot

a couple of month ago, i went with friends to Sahab, a small town in the eastern outskirts of Amman to demonstrate our shooting capabilities.
We were accompanied by first class instructor, a friend of our called mahmoud maharmeh.
We drove around 20 Km into the desert to reach Al-Mahrameh 1000 Dunum ranch.

We used a 9 mm Gun





There are three steps:

Hold the Gun
Aim
Shoot

If you ignore the instructions as to how to hold the gun, this is what may happen




me injured, and it took around 6 weeks and it has not completely cured.

The first lesson: Adhere to the instructions completely











This happened to me and my friend Maen, but Amjad escaped the injurey

















Amjad Shooting

















Maen Shooting







Aiming instructions is what you expect them to be, however, shooting experience is a bit difficult because of the bang sound and the reflex that one experiences. What makes you loose you concentration during aiming, is that while you are triggering and expecting the bullet to go out, your are in a wait state and you body and mind starts to react to the bullet explosion and its noise before it actually happens. If you can control this refelx, you shall score well.

Cold

I have been dorment for a while, something i seem to enjoy these days. for some reasons, nothing outside the domain of my direct (and inactive) life seems to matter. my wife is in Australia and coming back tomorrow. I spend the past 3 week all alone. That was cold! Moreover today was one of the coldest days this winter in Amman; the temperature reached a max of only 3 Degrees during the day, and it is below zero now at 10 PM. It will remain cold at least till next wednesday; unfortunately, it will also be very dry as well. These conditions are due to a high pressure system centered in Syberia and causing cold north weasterly winds to blow on middle eastern countries. No effective weather system is expected till Jan 20th where a low pressure system is expected to approach us. Still , however, it is too early to decide.

down under

tomorrow i am supposed to be traveling to Perth Australia with Jumana on a two week trip to visit friends living over there. A vacation, in other words. Due to thoughts beyond my control, Juaman will end up going to visit and I guess i will be staying right here in Amman

coming up in a trip to Angola, a country with extremely poor population, and yet one of the most expensive African countries where Malaria and Yellow fever can be found in abundance. Not only that, but if you are driving in the Capital, keep all cars locked and do not stop to anybody. Avoid being alone, avoid traveling, avoid leaving the hotel and you will be safe.