page_title: Hula Valley
section_title: Geography and climate
hierarchical_section_title: Hula Valley / Geography and climate
caption_attribution_description: A picture of several buffaloes in the Hulah Valley Reservation, Northern Israel.
context_page_description: The Hula Valley is an agricultural region in northern Israel with abundant fresh water, which used to be Lake Hula, prior to its draining. It is a major stopover for birds migrating along the Syrian-African Rift Valley between Africa, Europe, and Asia.
  Lake Hula and the marshland surrounding it were a breeding ground for mosquitoes carrying malaria, and so were drained in the 1950s. A small section of the valley was later re-flooded in an attempt to revive a nearly extinct ecosystem. An estimated 500 million migrating birds now pass through the Hula Valley every year.
context_section_description: For geological aspects see Dead Sea Transform#Hula Basin
  The Hula Valley lies within the northern part of the Syrian-African Rift Valley at an elevation of about 70 meters above sea level, and covers an area of 177 square kilometers (25 km by 6–8 km). On both sides of the valley are steep slopes: the Golan Heights to the east and the Upper Galilee's Naftali mountains to the west rise to 400 to 900 meters above sea level. Basalt hills of about 200 meters above sea level along the southern side of the valley intercept the Jordan River, and are commonly referred to as the basalt "plug", the Korazim block, or Korazim plateau (actually a temporary geologic base level), as they restrict water drainage downstream into the Sea of Galilee.
  The Hula Valley has a Mediterranean climate of hot dry summers and cool rainy winters, although its enclosure within two mountain ranges leads to more extreme seasonal and daily temperature fluctuations than in coastal areas. Annual rainfall varies greatly between different parts of the valley and ranges from about 400 millimeters in the south of the valley, to up to 800 millimeters in the north of the valley. More than 1,500 millimeters of precipitation falls on the Hermon mountain range, only a few kilometers north of the valley, mostly in the form of snow, feeding underground springs, including the sources of the Jordan River, all eventually flowing through the valley. The wind regime is dominated by regional patterns in the winter with occasional strong north-easterly wind storms known in Arabic as Sharkiyah.
caption: Water buffalo grazing in Hula Valley
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