Tag Archives: rain in the desert

On being jerked awake by Dubai Police

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If you live in Dubai, were you woken up to the sound of your phone blaring out like a police siren last Monday morning?

If, like me, this roused you from a deep slumber, did you have absolutely no idea what was going on? Were we at war? Had Iran launched a nuke?

All these thoughts ran through my head, my pulse rising, before the voice of reason chimed in – it’s surely just my alarm sounding extra … erm … extra alarming.

As it turned out, none of the above applied. It was the Dubai Police issuing a public safety alert – a loud warning tone designed to forewarn residents and visitors in the UAE about an imminent emergency.

My phone was also vibrating on my bedside table like a maniacal insect.

I picked it up in the half-dark, almost dropping it, and looked at the screen.

There was a message written in Arabic and English.

“The city of Dubai is exposed to fluctuations in weather conditions,” it read. In other words, rain in the UAE.

Members of the public were advised to “stay away from beaches, avoid areas of valleys, torrent flows, and low places.”

Putting all notions of trying to get back to sleep aside as my heart rate subsided, I got up and carried on with my day – working at home as the government had advised due to the wet weather. The schools that weren’t on half-term break proceeded with online learning.

Some people got the National Early Warning System alert up to four times.

There was indeed heavy rain, thunder and lightning across parts of the UAE, and I was glad to be able to stay home (rain in the UAE is like a snow day in the UK), but it’s funny how a downpour in this country can be so wild – and gets treated like a cyclone, even though it isn’t.

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.

Manufactured rain falls in the UAE

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“I’ve found you a new job!” I told DH excitedly the other day. “When you get bored of flying to exotic destinations with an army of attractive flight attendants, you could be a cloud buster!

“Just think, you’d be home every night!”

I’m not sure if it was the latter that was the cause of the nonplussed look, or the fact that in aviation you normally avoid cumulus clouds, but something about his response told me that while he did nearly end up cloud seeding in Texas some years ago, he wouldn’t be applying.

‘Franken-rain’ has been a topic of conversation in Dubai this week, because we’ve been having some really unseasonal, lovely weather. By now, we’re usually holed up in air-conditioned, tightly sealed bubbles, but this week windows have been thrown open to let in cooler air, the sound of thunder and the scent of fresh rain.

Really, really odd for this time of year.

Cloud seeding has been taking place in the UAE with thunderous success. Photo via Gulf News

The UAE dabbles in cloud seeding from time to time, with thunderous success this week. Photo via Gulf News

My suspicions were raised when a friend put on Facebook: “Awesome weather today! Thanks Sheikh Mo for the ionization!” And, if you think about it, modifying the weather in the UAE is something we’d all love to see. Imagine if the pleasant winter temperatures could last just a little bit longer – into mid-May and beyond, giving us extra time to enjoy outdoor activities and extending the tourist season.

My hunch was confirmed when I read in the press that the National Centre of Meteorology and Seismology (NCMS) has been seeding clouds since April 21 to coax the wet stuff out of them. “We are only enhancing the rainfall,” a NCMS scientist was quoted as saying – in other words, the showers are only in part due to the cloud seeding, but manufactured raindrops have indeed fallen.

So how do you persuade a wannabe rain cloud to douse the dry desert below? (and not sail on to a neighbouring country to shed its watery load elsewhere?) Here comes the science – and bear with me, it’s fascinating. Apparently, they study the weather charts in the morning to work out when convective cloud formation is likely to occur. The pilots are briefed and remain on stand-by, while the scientists continue to monitor radar images to make sure they catch the beginning of cloud formation (known as the initial stage of the cloud).

Once the operation starts, a plane flies into the lower third of the cloud, where the updrafts are more prevalent, and releases a chemical salt that gathers the tiny droplets of water in the air into larger ones. When the air has no more resistance to hold them, rain falls.

Impressive, no? And, in an arid country where there’s a shortage of water resources, giving nature a little helping hand in order to boost groundwater storage certainly sounds a good idea. But it does make me wonder: what on earth is IN those raindrops falling on our heads?

Expat Telegraph: How do we feel about the UAE’s Franken-rain?

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!

Dancing in the rain. Hooray!

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For months now, we’ve been teased.

Women have threatened to dance at wine o clock – wearing fascinators and feathers, their shoulders squared and a far-into-the-distance stare fixed on their botoxed faces.

Scientific puppetmasters have talked about (and possibly carried out) cloud seeding, in which steel lampshade-like ionisers create artificial clouds in the desert sky.

Then, last night, it finally happened: it rained.

And I slept through the whole thing, even the thunder and lightening that I’m told occurred.

It was nothing like a few years ago, when Dubai had hail stones so bad that all the cars were left with an ‘eggshell’ finish and we thought it was the end of the world.

But when we got up this morning, there was a strange darkness creeping round the curtains – Twitter was buzzing with rain tweets from Dubai-ians and the ground was actually wet.

The kids pressed their noses against the window and I joined them, peering out at the marvellous colours: the rain washes all the sand away and so instead of the tans and beiges we’ve been seeing recently, the trees and plants looked green. It’s like seeing your garden in technicolour and appreciating that it’s a lush oasis in the desert, not just a dusty yard.

Even the birds looked like they were dancing!

The world may watch us, rather bemused by our excitement, but when you live in a region where there’s only on average 13cm of rain a year, it’s the equivalent of a white Christmas every time it rains.

Ironically, DH was just off to Toronto and talking about sunscreen. They put it on in the cockpit as they fly over the North Pole apparently. I offered him one of my five or six bottles of sun tan lotion, before waving him off to the airport – and seeing the boys off to school.

Then I sat down with a cup of tea, my eyes glancing skywards at the grey clouds gathered above, and enjoyed an atmospheric, almost romantic (!) couple of hours on the laptop – the ground, by now, completely dry again and not a spot of rain in sight.

Oh well, there’s always next year.