Amman, Jordan: The calm before the storm

Emily Kennelly | Daily Trojan

When you think weather in the Middle East, you think hot, dry and eternally sunny, right? Wrong.

This week, Amman has been very cold — especially by Los Angeles standards — a chilly 45 degrees most days, and with winds up to 30 miles per hour, making doing absolutely anything outside extremely unpleasant. Worse yet, this week we had sandstorms — yes, sandstorms — that combined with the wind, whipped dust in our faces and covered the sky and the sun in an eerie haze. With this bizarre combination of weather, the world outside our insulated apartment and classrooms felt vaguely post-apocalyptic, with deserted streets and boarded up windows.

On Wednesday it even snowed briefly, a cataclysmic event in this city, which made my normal 20-minute cab ride home an hour-long ordeal. This wasn’t ordinary snow, however; it was dusty snow, mixed with the dirt in the air so that when it fell, you were showered with brown, slushy snow rather than the picturesque, fluffy white snowflakes I’m used to back home in New York. It felt like being back in elementary school, watching the blizzard swirl outside and waiting anxiously until, finally, the teacher declared that we could leave early. That night we even turned out pajamas inside-out, as the tradition goes, but sadly weren’t rewarded with a snow day — though that could be a reality later this week.

Needless to say, the weather this week wasn’t ideal. But when the dust finally cleared, Amman was our beautiful city again; we finally could see the endless hills of houses, magical sunsets, and of course—the sun. Every surface outside is still covered in dust, and with water being as expensive as it is, I doubt any of these cars will be clean soon, but we can finally breathe easy outside again, just in time for another snowstorm! As of now, the weather report for Thursday, Friday and Saturday claims a snowy mix of snow, rain and sleet, which will likely make leaving our apartment impossible.

Our scheduled trip to the desert has already been cancelled, and my program sent out an extremely detailed, lengthy email on how to deal with the storm in the event we get hit with one unexpectedly. We’re advised to make sure we have plenty of food, fresh water, gas and cell phone credit before this weekend, so that if we do get a storm, we won’t be helpless, as in the past storms of this gravity have paralyzed the city for days. So only time will tell!