The Hellenic National Meteorological Service forecasts that the storm winds will quiet down. At some points in the Aegean the winds got to 10 Beauforts. The rain and snowing will stop and Greece will greet Christmas with sunny but freezing weather. Yesterday’s storm, which showered over Athens, brought down many trees in the Northern suburbs Pefki and Kifisia. Happily there were no injured people or hit cars. Today the stormy winds have moved towards the Southern parts of the country – over the Dodecanese islands and Crete. Tomorrow it will snow in the mountains of Crete and on the other islands, it will rain.

On Christmas Eve the snowfalls will start again in Northern Greece, in the higher parts of the mountains. This is why the police is warning everybody to have chains in their cars, so they can put them on if needed. The traffic police also warns that drivers should be very careful, because the streets will be covered with ice during the early and late hours of the day. Christmas will be sunny but freezing and snowfalls are expected in the higher parts of the mountains around the country. The wind will be mild to average.

Pelting rain is falling over Cyprus and moving around the national roads is announced to be extremely dangerous. Critical is the situation in Larnaka and Limassol. In Larnaka, a surprising tornado hit the coastal neighborhood Finikouda. A mother and her baby were almost taken into the twirling wind but at the last moment a coffee shop owner dragged them inside. The pelting rains in Limassol flooded the streets and forced tens of drivers to remain in their cars for hours. The firefighters received calls for over 100 flooded houses.

The only ones happy from the pelting rains in Cyprus are the hydrologists, who see them as a rescue and hope for filling up the extremely low water reserves on the island.