Ezra 10:9

Then all the men of Judah and Benjamin gathered themselves together unto Jerusalem within three days. It was the ninth month, on the twentieth day of the month, between the end of December and the first part of January, the coldest and most disagreeable season in Palestine; and all the people sat in the street of the house of God, out in the court and in the open square before the court, trembling because of this matter, excited and worried on account of the cause for which they had been summoned, and for the great rain, which at that season falls in torrents.