TORRENTIAL bouts of rain and hail pounded the island yesterday, one day after Sunday’s Saharan sandstorm covered the island in gritty dust.
During the late morning and early afternoon hours, showers caused flash floods in the capital, trapping dozens of people in their cars.
The Fire Brigade received 60 calls for assistance and sent out eight crews to deal with flooded basements and rescue stranded motorists. According to police, the most affected areas were Ayios Pavlos, Ayios Dhometios, Archangelos and central Nicosia, where water flooded the basements of the Interior Ministry and the General Hospital.
Despite the havoc wreaked by the unseasonably wet weather, it had the welcome side effect of cleaning the sand from the atmosphere. A stifling dust cloud lingered over the island all day on Sunday in a hazy, yellowish twilight, the result of a sandstorm blown in from North Africa.
Kyriacos Theophilou, the director of the National Weather Service, characterised the weather as “dust that was carried over by a low pressure system that originated in Libya and now has moved eastwards and is no longer affecting the area.”
Similar conditions persisted through Sunday evening.
Cyprus experiences sandstorms once or twice annually, and in late April last year, similar conditions prevailed for several days.
Theophilou does not expect the dust to return and predicts that “stable weather will prevail until Wednesday with some clouds and showers, especially in the afternoon.”
Concerned about the air quality, the Ministry of Labour and Social Insurance dispatched mobile teams in Nicosia on Sunday to test environmental conditions. They found that on Sunday the dust had increased to 20 times the acceptable limit set by the government for pollution in the atmosphere.
At 2pm it was 5,000 milligrams per cubic metre, while the amount set by that law is 250 milligrams per cubic metre.
Due to these excessive levels, the Ministry of Labour and social services warned the public to avoid leaving their homes unless absolutely necessary until the air cleared.
Some regional hospitals received treating a trickle of patients for weather-related conditions.
Limassol hospital reported half a dozen cases of respiratory problems, mostly due to bronchial asthma, while Paphos Hospital treated five cases.
However, Dr. Andreas Evagorou from Nicosia General Hospital said that “we didn’t have a high intake of coming in with this problem,” and added that for those they did treat, “we can’t assume that all of the cases were due to the weather conditions.”
At Larnaca hospital, a region where the weather conditions were less severe, no patients were treated.
Dr. Evis Bagdades, a pneumologist at the Apollonion Hospital in Nicosia told the Cyprus Mail that he saw two to three patients on Sunday.
“This year it was very dense, but thanks to the rain and winds, the worst should be over.”
Last year, similar conditions persisted over several days. Dr. Bagdades recalls at the end of this period, he had seen more patients than during Sunday’s very intense conditions.
“It is a very, very aggressive inhalant dust,” said Dr. Bagdades. “Don’t forget that it is not just dust, it is pollen in very high concentrations. For somebody who has never had respiratory problems, they will feel the same stuffiness and difficulty breathing as an asthmatic, for an asthmatic, it is a classic attack.”
Most air traffic was unhindered by the dust. At Paphos airport, one inbound flight from Brussels was diverted to Larnaca, but there were no other cancellations or delays. Larnaca airport reported no serious disruptions in scheduled flights.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
