Big freeze should ease, while dams have 20 per cent more water than last year
THE BIG freeze in Cyprus should ease this week, director of weather services Kyriakos Theophilou said yesterday.
The New Year brought with it unusually low temperatures, as barometers dropped to as low as 4 degrees Celsius on the central plain, compared to a 15.5 degree early January average.
Half a metre of snow fell in Troodos village. Mountain roads were closed on Friday morning, leaving would-be snow tourists from Nicosia stuck in Kakopetria.
The foothills up to 100 metres were coated and even the higher ground around Paphos was treated to a rare sighting of snowflakes – a phenomenon that has happened only a handful of times in the last 20 years.
Temperatures have hovered around the 12 degree mark in the last few days on the coast – well short of the 16.5 January norm. Nicosia and the central plains were battered with heavy rain on Friday and Saturday.
Director of the Water Development Department Christodoulos Artemis said yesterday that the nation’s dams were 30.4 per cent full – compared to just 11.3 per cent on January 7, 2001.
Dam water reserves all over the island yesterday tallied 83.25 million cubic metres, after torrential downpours in December 2001 – the eight wettest month on record since 1916.
“The rain and snow is due to the low pressure system over the Turkish coast, which is moving east. It will arrive in east Cyprus by the end of Monday, so probably future rain and snow showers will be very limited,” said Theophilou.
Today is expected to be a little warmer, while cloud, local showers and thunderstorms are predicted for tomorrow. Snow will fall once again in the mountains.
Another low-pressure system is expected to push in on Thursday, as temperatures thaw slightly to reach about 13 degrees in the capital.
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.
