I knew CNN Producer Schams Elwazer and I must have looked pathetic trekking out into the snow blizzard on the side of the road earlier today, when an ambulance slowed down and offered us a ride.

I have never seen a snowstorm so intense in the Middle East. Not even in the early nineties, when, in heavy snow, a car I was riding in in Northern Syria spun off the side of the highway and right into a ditch.

There is something magical about extreme weather. Strangers smile at other strangers; passers-by greet each other; cars offer rides to stranded pedestrians on snow-covered sidewalks. People seem to form a fleeting - but powerful - human bond. This is, after all, something exceptional and bigger than all of us.

At the hotel, employees are stranded as well. One of them told me he walked half an hour in the snow to work today. The morning breakfast staff couldn't make it in at all, so waiters from the dinner shift spent the night at the hotel and worked overtime to fill in.

Stranded tourists worriedly asked if there would be food tonight at the hotel.

"We can't guarantee that," said the concierge.

oh well. There's always the mini-bar.

-- Posted by Hala Gorani in Amman