Changing weather patterns have made 2026 the summer of the cactus flower.
Climate change affects weather patterns around the world. I remember the summer of 1984 – my first Washington DC experience working at a downtown law firm – with daily cloudbursts that broke out mid-afternoon, reducing humidity and contributing to cooler nights and evenings. Those predictable summer storms became a thing of the past in the late 80’s early 90’s.
Since then I have lived / traveled through East Asian and Indian monsoons, Middle Eastern droughts, and everything in between. The experience of living through two years of Manila monsoons (1995 – 1997) provides a frame of reference for me now that the winter rainy season appears to be changing here in Israel. (In Manila we used to say “Monsoon good, typhoon bad.”)
Fast forward to 2026 and Israel’s rainy season has changed in unprecedented ways – more infrequent, intense rainstorms are more like Asian monsoon rains than typical MENA winter storms. And apparently this will be the trend: episodic, intense and highly concentrated rainstorms.
Last year’s monsoon-like rains saturated Israel’s normally arid regions, leading to a bonanza of cactus flowers. My husband planted a cactus garden in front of our house from bits and pieces of broken succulents that he has found in the road everywhere from here in Zichron Yaakov to the Gilboa. It has been a joy to watch the growth of the cacti over the last several years, and this year has been nothing short of spectacular.
The flowers seem to mainly open at night; I have tried my best to capture photos. A few times they have opened in the early am.Each new flower seems to spring out from nowhere, blossoms intensely for a few hours, and that’s it!