Good evening everyone,

I'm back from 3 days off at Elati, where the annual gathering of the
"Hellasweather" yahoo group (pretty much the greek equivalent of this
newsgroup) took place. Elati is in the heart of the Pindus mountain range
that runs the country from the albanian/FYROM border to the Peloponnese, at
950 m amsl.

Heavy snow on Sunday, covering the older ices:
http://www.e-kairos.com/elati/chioni.jpg

A little church in the middle of nowhe
http://www.e-kairos.com/elati/ekklisaki.jpg

View from Elati to the valley:
http://www.e-kairos.com/elati/koilada1.jpg

Before the snowfalls of Sunday (that are still in force):
http://www.e-kairos.com/elati/topio1.jpg
http://www.e-kairos.com/elati/topio2.jpg
http://www.e-kairos.com/elati/topio4.jpg
http://www.e-kairos.com/elati/topio3.jpg [where Athenians beat the rest in
snow-war) ]

This mini-avalanche must be a few days old:
http://www.e-kairos.com/elati/avalanche.jpg

The wind picks up the new snow from the trees:
http://www.e-kairos.com/elati/blsn.jpg

We got all kinds of weather there, from thickening altostrati on Friday to
rain and thunderstorms in the extremely mild air -given the altitude- (+3C)
that reduced the snow cover that was insisting from the last weeks'
snowfalls, soft hail and, finally, snowfalls on Sunday. 10 cm came to add
themselves up to the existing 50 cm of snow, while, a little higher up,
towards the ski resort, things were more severe and driving was possible
only with the use of wheel chains. Snow accumulations were 80 cm, drifting
to one metre, and reaching 2 metres on the top of the lifts (roads were kept
clear but snow lied immediately upon the start of the snowfalls on Sunday).

Unfortunately, 3 of us had to drive back to Ioannina via the 'Katara' road
(="curse", literally), where conditions were very dangerous indeed with
visibility down to 2 metres, blizzards and blowing snow:
http://www.thefilebin.com/userfiles/...hn/katara9.JPG
so they were stuck in the snow for three hours in the night and one of them
had to lead the way by walking beside the car in the otherwise empty road as
graders were too late. Luckily, they returned back to Ioannina -that won the
greek "snow-cup" for 2004/2005- safe.

It has now started to snow in Thessaloniki and most of northern Greece from
the top of the mountains to sea level, as colder air masses are advected
southwards. At the same time, warm advection is taking place from the south
and Tuesday should see temperature differences as high as 25 degrees between
low lying areas of the south (especially northern Crete) and the north (ie
Thessaloniki).

Yannis, SE Athens
+9.4C, RH 79%, SLP 1005.8 hPa, -RA
http://2005.e-kairos.com/february.html