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Snow in Naxos 0
I went to Greece in early February 2004. My visit coincided with the coldest weather in Greece for 100 years. In Naxos there was snow at sea level for the first time in nearly 30 years. These are a few of the photographs I took.
I have placed the photos in chronological order. I arrived in Naxos on a Friday. On Friday Greek TV stations had non-stop coverage of the bad weather ('kakokeria'). By Saturday Naxos town had a light covering of snow, and the hills around were white with snow. Not knowing how badly affected the roads were, I did not venture inland on the Saturday. On Sunday there was quite a bit of snow in the Chalki and Filoti areas.
I have tweaked the photos so that they do not take too long to load, but this has reduced the quality of the photos. Let me know (
swatkinwebpages@amorgos.freeserve.co.uk ) if you would like to see better copies of the photos.
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Friday - before the snow arrived at sea level on Naxos.
The waves are lashing over the causeway. You can see a wire fence placed across the start of the causeway, to stop people walking across. I have dashed across the causeway, ducking to avoid waves, many times in stormy weather, but never in conditions as rough as this.
At the right of the photo you can see the covered seating area of a bar. I remember peering around the plastic canopy to see the sea in the Grotta area - it was bitterly cold without the relative shelter of the buildings!
I later noticed that some of the breakwater (on the horizon at the left of the photo) had been washed away.
Not shown in the photo is the large white marble kouros that was placed at the start of the causeway in Summer 2004.
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Looking out towards the main harbour area. I doubt if any ferries ran that day!
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Early on Saturday morning. I opened the shutters of my room at Hotel Anna, near Naxos Orthodox Cathedral to see - snow! There wasn't much snow on the ground, but the hills beyond are covered in snow.
I ventured out very early with my camera - to see the wonderland that was Naxos in the snow.