By Viva Sarah Press

October 29, 2015

A winter storm is taking its toll on Israelis, with mass power outages and severe flooding in a country used to sunny days and clear skies.

Flash floods in the south of the country blocked roads, and flooding in cities damaged homes, cars, and property.

Flooded Weizman Street in Ra’anana, on October 28, 2015. Photo by Chen Leopold/FLASH90

Residents of Tel Aviv, Herzliya, Kfar Saba and Ra’anana continue to suffer severe flooding – and residents of the areas are trying to outdo one another with best photos and videos of the damage caused by the inclement weather.

Streets of Ra’anana. Photo via Twitter

A short video of trash cans floating down a street in Kfar Saba scored over 500,000 views in just a few hours on Facebook.

Ra’anana residents posted numerous tweets and Facebook photos with the hashtag in Hebrew, #ThisIsNotVenice. Kfar Saba residents preferred the hashtag, #Winter2015.

Heavy rainfall and strong winds first whipped up chaos on Sunday, knocking down trees, a crane, and taking out electricity lines to 200,000 homes. The state-owned Israel Electric Cooperation took two days to restore power to all the homes and just hours before another round of thunderstorms battered the country once again causing further power outages.

Trees came down due to heavy rain in Tel Aviv, on October 25, 2015. Photo by Ben Kelmer/FLASH90

Police evacuated dozens of people stranded in their homes and cars in Kfar Saba and Ra’anana on Wednesday, according to a report on Israel Radio.

While the storm’s damage is nothing to joke about, some Israelis took a lighter approach to the flooding and took their SUP boards out to surf the muddy waters covering local streets and parks.