"Ariadne" the snowstorm!

Outside it is sunny with clear skies and rather cold today! Nothing reminds us of the awful weather that hit our country just a couple of days ago. In fact sometime between 6th and 14th January a low barometric system coming from Siberia hit Greece. The Greek meteorologists who had earlier taken the decision to name various weather phenomena in 2017 with Greek names called it "Ariadne"

So "Ariadne" will really be very difficult to be forgotten!

Not only because it was the first weather phenomenon that took a name in Greece but mainly because it caused the worst damage at least of the last 50 years and more.

Specifically for my city it snowed for three days which is so rare here. We hadn't seen so much snow since 1988.

But the worst was not the snow. It was the low temperatures. In the city it reached -10 degrees C with a feeling of -20 which is really unusual. In fact it hadn't happened to be so bitterly cold since 1963!

The moment it started snowing and it was blowing hard too I went out in the balcony and took photos with the macro lens hubby bought for our mobiles! That's a really great gadget and although I am against buying gadgets this one is perfect.And not expensive at all.

Since I take photos with my mobile and not with a camera it is great to be able to take macro photos too. 

And the most amazing was the coincidence of having a little new macro lens and snow! And here is what I managed to do, take photos of snowflakes!

I admit I was overwhelmed! Something I had seen Margie of Resurrection Fern do and now I managed too!

It started snowing at 11 in the morning on Tuesday 10th and 10 minutes later....

 half an hour later....

 I couldn't take photos of any more snowflakes as the snow came in bigger quantities.

 An hour later...

 cars couldn't pass.

 So we decided to go the sea front and play with the snow!

 Wow! I hadn't seen the seafront like that ever!

 Barca loved it!

 We all loved it!

 Very soon the streets were impossible to drive through and there was a huge traffic jam at the bigger avenues. Buses and public transport ceased and people walked home.

 The seafront was a huge white avenue.

 My son didn't at first want to come walk at the seafront but he soon decided it was a chance maybe of a lifetime. I guess he will always remember January snow of 2017 like I still remember the December 1988.

 There were ships down there in the sea but we could only hear their horns; we couldn't see them.

 That night the light was so much brighter in our street because of the snow!

 It was everywhere even in our balcony so I took some more photos trying to capture the snowflakes.

 See the different shape here?

 Soon the cold became the problem.Everything froze, water, snow, pipes, and they started breaking. People didn't have heating, or water.At some places they didn't have both for a week and lots of damage at appliances and pipes. We were lucky we simply didn't have hot water for a couple of days.

We were also lucky because we didn't have school as schools were closed everywhere.Our headmaster didn't ask us to reach our school, there was no reason anyway.So I spent one more week of holidays!

Look how much snow there was at the school yard (photos of our headmaster)

A couple of days later when the sun came out the snow started melting. We walked the seafront again to take a couple of photos with the sun of the beauty all around us.

So although lots of people were happy with the snow at first it caused more trouble as the city wasn't ready for it.
But it will definitely be a time to remember. "Ariadne" was both beautiful and hard!

(Christmas ornament by my Scottish friend Gabrielle)