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SFC_Jeff_Button · Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 10:41 pm Post subject: Who says it doen't snow in Iraq?

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Staff Sgt. Daniel Riggs, from the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, patrols Mosul, Iraq, in his Stryker vehicle on a chilly winter day. Photo by Spc. Clydell Kinchen.
I found this at Army Knowledge On-Line (AKO).

Jeffrey_Button

Is that real snow

SFC_Jeff_Button

Probably more like sleet / freezing rain, and very miserable for all those involved I'm sure.

Roy_A_Lingle

Hi Folks!

While many folks understand that a desert area is hot. What many do not under stand is during the night and during winter seasons, desert areas can and do get very cold.

The first winter after I retired and move to El Paso Texas, which is in a high desert area, it snowed 22 inchs in the Northeast section of town. The state highway department only has five snow plows and the city has NONE. My family didn't leave the house for five days.

A few years after I started working for the Border Patrol, there was another snow storm that hit this area with enough snow to shut down a lot of the roadways. All Border Agents where detail to support the Police department. Most of the BP vehicles are four by fours, the PD has none.

During most winters, it is very common for water pipes to freeze and break around this desert area.

Armor content. Be careful hitting small sand burms doing the winter, sometime they can be frozen and hard as rock. I can tell you, it hurts when the tracked vehicle stops and you don't.

Spot Report,
Sgt, Scouts Out!

Jens_O_Mehner

Ayup,

not a big surprise, Iraq is neither the Sahara nor Saudi-Arabia, but entertains a moderate climate zone up North along the Turkish border (where Mossul is incidentally located), and snow is a normal occurence the further into the mountains you get- been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

The Middle East isn't all desert or prairie, Turkish winters have been known to kill people, and in the mountains of Lebanon, snow is a part of the winter season, there used to be ski resorts before the civil war which may have been rebuilt by now. Google "snow" and "Lebanon", you're bound to get some pictures showing the famous cedars up to their wooden armpits in snow, and I've seen photos of IDF personnel in thick parkas, surrounded by snow.

Come on folks, time to brush up on your geography skills- what an embarrasment if you have to go to Mossul and you show up in shorts and sunscreen in 6 inches of snow.

Cheers

Jens O.

68Barracuda

Heck, it happens HERE!

Squadron Det from NAS whidbey to Fallon Nevada..."it never gets cold in the desert" and "what'er you packing a parka for!"...I was a laughing stock...

Until we landed that frosty January afternoon during a snow storm!

125 souls on board that Navy C-9 (Mikey Douglass MD-80'ish thing)

Only 5 of us had warm clothes! It was a freakin stampede to the base exchange.

Geoff_walden · ***Power User*** Offline Joined: Jan 26, 2006 Posts: 133

It hailed in Balad about a week ago. We were scraping frost off the trucks here in Tikrit earlier this month (not now - it has warmed up to almost 70 F). The other day there was a really brilliant rainbow - first one I ever saw in Iraq.

Geoff Walden

C_Sherman · ***Power User*** Offline Joined: Jan 24, 2006 Posts: 590

- Geoff_walden

It hailed in Balad about a week ago. We were scraping frost off the trucks here in Tikrit earlier this month (not now - it has warmed up to almost 70 F). The other day there was a really brilliant rainbow - first one I ever saw in Iraq.

Geoff Walden

I'll probably be laughed at for this, but like pretty much everywhere I've been around the world, even Iraq has the occasional sight that catches your breath. I've discovered that even the worst of the world's armpits will surprise you with something enchantingly beautiful once in a while. It happens more often than you think in Iraq, at least it did to me.

Once the whole "kill the infidel" runs it's course, I can see Iraq as a major tourist destination...assuming the terrorists don't ruin everything worth seeing, just to prove some point that no one else can see. There is history from the birth of civilization to the modern day, multiple climates and breathtaking geography, and a lot of surpisingly normal and interesting people. Time will tell, but I'm betting that it will happen (look at Vietnam, if you doubt it).

C

David_Reasoner

The Osprey book on British Infantry in North Africa has an interesting photo of a group of "Tommies" standing in the snow. As the caption states, it looks like it was taken in France during the winter of 1939-40, but was actually taken in the Middle East!

David

Geoff_walden · ***Power User*** Offline Joined: Jan 26, 2006 Posts: 133

Chuck, I think you're absolutely right. It may take MANY years, but if the country's people are smart, when they straighten this mess out, they will go for the tourism angle. I have been fortunate enough while here to visit the Babylon site and some of the ruins of the Nineveh period in and around Mosul - they could do a lot with those. Not to mention the Ziggurat (sp?) at Ur, and sites of more recent historic interest. And that's just history ... there are the mountains and the river valleys to see as well, and the desert if one so desires. And interesting cultures to mix with ... IF they can ever turn the corner and get away from this anti-Western bias.

Geoff Walden

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