U. of Haifa campus gets record rain in 60 minutes, causing wet classrooms

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
The University of Haifa campus was overwhelmed by a record 88 millimeters of rain within one hour on Thurday - so much that the Israel Meteorology Service thought rain meters there had gone on the blink. The water caused flooding in some university facilities. Prof. Haim Kutiel, a climate expert at the university's geography department, said that the downpour was so extreme that nobody believed it. "In the nearby Denya quarter, only 30 mm. fell; in Beit Oren 7 and Haifa Port 0.1. If we hadn't rain meters on campus, nobody would have believed us," he said. Some classrooms and other facilities were overrun by runoff that could not be handled by sewers. It took hours for campus staffers to deal with the excess water.