With the Changing of the Clocks Come the First Showers of Winter

If Israelis, who set their clocks back to standard time last weekend, needed any more proof that summer was over, they got it Sunday morning.

The weatherman says it was pure coincidence that the first rains of the winter season fell in the Haifa and Galilee areas early Sunday morning only a couple of hours after the clocks were set back to “winter time” at midnight Saturday.

But the precipitation proved to be only few drops, lending credence to the meteorological service’s insistence that Israelis would still have another month of summer to enjoy.

The termination of summer daylight time was ordered by the Orthodox-controlled Interior Ministry, not because of climatic conditions but to make life easier for observant Jews reciting the pre-High Holiday Selichot penitential prayers before dawn each day during the month of Elul.