Tag Archives: Dubai roads in the rain

When it finally rains after two years

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We’d waited two years for this moment! Yes, it must have been late 2019 BC/early 2020 BC when it last rained in Dubai. (BC=Before Covid).

Of course, I chose the exact moment the clouds burst to venture out in the car, to take the 13-yr-old to his basketball camp. We turned onto the new tarmacked road our compound got for Christmas, and I quickly realised we were heading into a storm. The usual cerulean blue sky had turned pigeon grey. The same solemn colour I remembered from London. 

My excitement grew!

A few days previously, the clouds had teased us. There had been talk of rain on the radio. I’d peered out the window. Large puffy clouds resembling cotton wool balls were floating past, but nothing like real weather. It never rained. Not properly. Bucketfuls of sand just got chucked at the car, that’s all.  

But this was the real thing! The heavens, black and swollen with rain, were as squally and dull as the road. The sandy scenery on either side of the quiet desert cut-through to the highway looked moody, laden with anticipation. 

Within minutes, a bolt of lightning flashed. Falling back into a childhood habit, I start counting in my head. A few raindrops splashed onto the tarmac, darkening it in small, irregular splodges, when I got to four.

“Wow!” I exclaimed, even managing to get the attention of the 13-yr-old. 

The downpour, when it came, pounded wildly on the car roof. Being in DH’s car, I didn’t even know where the windscreen wipers were and flicked every lever I could find while keeping my hands firmly on the steering wheel. 

Dubai rarely sees raindrops, but when it does … watch out on the roads

“Take a photo!” I urged as we passed the Burj Khalifa. The steely tower’s tapering needlepoint top – which reaches heights no other manmade structure has ever achieved – had been swallowed by the billowing clouds. In fact, half the concrete-and-glass building had disappeared the cloud cover was so low. 

Then the rainstorm got so intense, the visibility dropped to a few metres. While most cars slowed to a crawl – some putting their hazards on so you could just pick out blinking lights in the monsoon-like rainfall – others aquaplaned perilously along the wet highway at their usual high speed. Delivery drivers on bikes took shelter under the city’s bridges. 

I couldn’t remember the last time Dubai saw such a big storm. With inadequate drainage, the water collected in huge lakes, forming floods the size of swimming pools.

Flashing signs above Sheikh Zayed Road warned drivers to ‘Beware of the ponds’. 

Where a flooded part of the road was impossible to avoid, a bow wave formed at the front of our vehicle like we were a ship on the sea. There was a great whooshing of water and spray splashed up on both sides of the car. 

Suddenly regretting my decision to leave the house, I willed it all to stop! At least until I could get home, and actually enjoy the rare event that is rain in Dubai.

Armageddon on Al Qudra

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It’s been an unusual day, to say the least.

Children in the UAE might have squealed with delight as they paddled up and down the street in inflatables and sailed boats to the supermarket (no joke) …

kids having fun in rain

Lucky kids: School’s out again tomorrow

But me – well I lost my mojo somewhere on Al Qudra street – about an hour into the apocalyptic traffic jam attempting to inch its way through biblical floods last seen by Noah.

It all started at 4am, with an enormous crash of thunder. Lightning sliced the sky. But even then, the morning school run was fine – just a disappointed son to contend with following the cancellation of his school trip. Actually, he was more worried about the fact his lunch was in a plastic Spinneys bag (as requested by the teacher). “Mummy, go home and get my lunch box!” he pleaded while I tried to stop him lobbing his sandwiches away.

The sky quickly turned a scrubbed pigeon grey then a really ominous granite colour, sort of slated and solemn. Daylight made only a feeble attempt to break through the billowing cloud cover. The rain, when it came, drummed wildly on our roof. It lashed the windows, cascaded off our garage in a waterfall, and collected in huge ‘ponds’ that within an hour or so all joined up to form floods the size of lakes.

The schools closed, I can’t even begin to imagine what happened at the airports. Buildings flooded, structural damage occurred and the traffic snarled up until it grid-locked so badly I took a big chance and swerved onto sand in the hope of ploughing my way through a building site to escape the Armageddon on Al Qudra (I made it!).

This Dubai driver didn't make it

This Dubai driver didn’t make it


The children, meanwhile, went out in their swimming gear. A neighbour took his canoe for a paddle round the compound. Ironically, the water cut off in our villa – I did see the funny side of this, given that outside it was knee-deep, with waves rippling up the path every time a car swished by, wheels hissing. The lights started flickering … “Picked a great week for our winter-sun holiday, didn’t we?” said my Mum as she Facebooked photos of the rain for the amusement of British friends and family.

Her last photo, of tankers vacuuming up the rainwater through giant straws, was captioned: “Now we’ve seen it all!”

Dubai really doesn’t do rain.

Keep safe tomorrow everyone.

Flooding in the desert – yes, really!

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Long-time readers of this blog will know that rain in Dubai can be as exciting as, say, a white Christmas in the west.

It’s always the talk of the town, and is usually prequeled with a will-it, won’t-it, slightly murky lead-up that puts the whole of the emirate on rain watch.

5 drops here, 10 drops there. Radio presenters add to the ripples of anticipation, as listeners text in with rain sightings.

Maybe once or twice a year, it does actually rain – and I nearly always savour the event, however quickly it’s over, from start to finish.

NOT this time.

It began with a hunch, a sort of uneasy feeling that all was not well with our usually sunny world. As a strange darkness crept round the curtains this morning, I morphed into Rain Scrooge.

Puffy rain clouds – meh! We all cast our eyes skywards to witness the perennial blue sky clouding over

“Oh no, not rain!’ I thought to myself. My Dad was going to the golf, and I had lots of driving to do (from point A, to point B, to point C, and then possibly to point D later on).

If you saw how people drive – no, make that aquaplane – when it rains here, you’d understand. And there was also the small matter of not knowing if the wipers on the car would work (they disintegrated on our other car through lack of use).

“Mummy, it’s raining – on Grandad’s golf day,” squealed LB, hurtling up the stairs like a baby elephant.

We peered out the window at the glistening ground and I reassured Dad it woudn’t last – there was no way the golf could be rained off in Dubai – but even though it wasn’t really much of a downpour, chaos was unleashed on the roads.

A puddle on Sheikh Zayed Road made it onto the traffic news, my journey to work took three times as long, and all over Dubai, there were repercussions because of the unique event that is rain in the desert.

Swimming lessons were cancelled due to debris in the pool (a few leaves, perhaps?); Wake-up and Shake-up, a weekly event parents attend at school (don’t ask!), was postponed due to the tennis court being wet.

But the most-trying news was to come. At work, my phone rang with a number I didn’t recognise. It’s BB’s birthday party tomorrow and on the other end was the manager of the venue.

“We’re flooded,” he told me. “This whole side of the Ibn Battuta mall is covered in water. We’re sorry, we can’t do the party.” (I don’t normally swear on the blog, but sometimes an expletive is necessary: @^%^@@@!)

Cue: a day spent finding another venue so as not to disappoint an excited small boy on his seventh birthday (thank you DH for pulling off that one), and contacting 25 mums to let them know.

I mean, seriously, what are the chances of a party venue being flooded in Dubai? It was only a piddling amount of rain.

Pah!

Postscript: BB’s birthday is now at Chuck E. Cheese’s – I can’t believe I’m hosting a party at Chuck E. Cheese’s. Ever since my friend’s boy attended a party there and got his head stuck between the toilet roll and the loo door, I’ve vowed never to enter Chuck E. Cheese’s lair with more than two kids. Wish me luck!