Khamsin
| Chamsin in hieroglyphics | |||||
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Resetyu Rstyw The south winds |
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The Chamsin (Arabic for fifty ; Ancient Egyptian Resetyu ; Hebrew Sharav ) is a very hot and dry desert wind ( Scirocco ) that temporarily blows in Libya , Egypt and Israel / Palestinian Autonomous Areas , Syria , Lebanon and Cyprus in spring mostly in mid-April or early May occurs, in rare cases in March.
Origin and occurrence
The name goes back to the fact that the Khamsin always blows for an average of three to four days within a 50-day period beginning on the equinox .
The Chamsin arises from a typical change in weather conditions in spring and autumn, especially when there is a high pressure area over Mesopotamia and a simultaneous low pressure area over the Mediterranean Sea . The consequence is the influx of hot and dry continental air (only 10–20% humidity), often combined with a sandstorm , whereby the speed of the storm plays a subordinate role. The Khamsin blows from the south and west. In Israel, the temperatures during the Chamsintage reach their annual highs (up to over 40 ° C).
In ancient Egypt the Khamsin was known as the south winds ( Resetyu ), which were responsible for an uncomfortable climate in the Nile Delta for an average of three days before the north winds brought relief. In the ancient Egyptian mythological calendar of Nectanebo I , the Resetyu were assigned to the 20th decade (April 10th to 19th) and the first week of the valley festival month : “The great god at the beginning, who creates the southern winds in the sky. He is the one who creates ... bitterness for three days. He can't breathe after vomiting blood. "
It is not uncommon for the Chamsin to have a strong influence on visibility, so that it is reduced to a few meters away. After the Khamsin, it almost always rains on the Levant . Due to the extreme temperatures, the Khamsin is an unpleasant weather phenomenon for humans; the Israeli satirist Ephraim Kishon describes this experience as follows: “In addition, there is a dry, scorching desert wind, a kind of super sirocco, ... (...) When the khamzin blows, you can't breathe, you can hardly stand on your feet and feels the withering of the nerve cords almost plastically. "
The Chamsin is sometimes dangerous. The sandy air leads to severe breathing problems for many people and even claimed two lives in 2015.
In certain weather conditions, the Chamsin causes sand dust to penetrate into the German Rhineland , where it is deposited as a fine coating and is particularly noticeable as a layer of dirt on the surface of moving and stationary vehicles.
See also
literature
- Christian Leitz : Ancient Egyptian star clocks . Peeters, Leuven 1995, ISBN 90-6831-669-9
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Khamsin, the hot desert wind | Studio Tel Aviv. (No longer available online.) In: blog.br.de. Archived from the original on November 21, 2016 ; accessed on November 21, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Christoph Ehrhardt, Hans-Christian Rößler: Sandstorm "Chamsin": Sand under . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . September 10, 2015, ISSN 0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed November 21, 2016]).
- ↑ Sahara sand: The desert floats. From: WZ Newsline , August 25, 2005, accessed April 4, 2011 .
