Tag Archives: winter in Dubai

Rain scrooge – yep, that’s me!

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I’m well aware there are lots of people in Dubai who love it when it rains – and I really do hope they enjoy the annual downpour. But I’m beginning to wonder if these people have actually been out in the rain – or afterwards, when the floods are knee deep.

Given that rain is a fairly rare event in our patch of desert (maybe a few times a year), I can’t resist doing a quick pictorial on the blog, of the almost biblical event that is a decent rain-shower and the apocalyptic aftermath of a blustery and thundery night.

While we slept … ET phone home!

Lightning sliced the sky, and thunder rolled. Pic courtesy of futureofdubai.com

Lightning sliced the sky, and thunder rolled. Pic courtesy of futureofdubai.com

If I’d looked on Facebook before leaving the house, I might have seen this photo, forewarning of what lay ahead at the roundabout on the school run … (rain, meh!)

Up to the doors in places - and even posh cars get stuck. This is a Rolls-Royce! Pic courtesy of Dubai 92, Catboy & Geordiebird

Up to the doors in places – and even posh cars get stranded. This is a Rolls-Royce! Pic courtesy of Dubai 92, Catboy & Geordiebird

Left: But at least while stuck for an hour-and-a-half on the way to school, there was lots to look at. Right: And a cautionary tale for anyone thinking about attempting to skip the backed-up patient traffic!

Left: But at least while stuck for an hour-and-a-half on the way to school, there’s lots to look at. Right: And a cautionary tale for anyone thinking about attempting to skip the backed-up patient traffic!

Finally through the traffic, we find ourselves on the road to school, which looks like a canal in places …

Might look like a canal, but it is a road (I begin to wonder if we'll make it)

I begin to wonder if we’ll make it

Left: The ampitheatre at school: “Look Mummy! It’s a duck pond!” Right: Vacuuming starts all around the city-with-no-drains

Left: The ampitheatre at school: “Look Mummy! It’s a duck pond!” Right: Vacuuming starts all around the city-with-no-drains

And the final hurdle … waves outside work! If I’d known, I’d have borrowed a yacht.

photo-449

But just to prove I’m not a complete rain scrooge, and that there is a silver lining in every cloud … this was the view outside my office window for all of two minutes:

Where's the gold? (I believe it's in a vending machine at the Madinat)

Where’s the gold? (I believe it’s in a vending machine at the Madinat)

The big chill

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It’s all relative, I know, but it really is quite chilly in the desert right now. And for the few weeks each year that this happens (Winter light, as I call it), it’s as though my children think we’re living in Alaska.

“I’m cold,” is the first whine of the day, followed by a big song and dance over putting their clothes on and exposing their bare skin to the bracing air (15 degrees this morning, and that is, erm, centigrade). “Still cold,” pipes up Son 2 on the school run, despite the heater – or “heat machine” as he calls it –  being turned on in the car.

“You have no idea what cold is,” I try to explain to them (where we lived before, in Minneapolis in the Midwest of America, it’s been -45 with the windchill recently and the schools had to close for a few days).

In anticipation of the dramatic change in weather, Dubai Confidential compiled a survival guide

In anticipation of the dramatic change in weather, Dubai Confidential compiled a survival guide

I’ve tried to tell them that if we still lived there, they wouldn’t be able to leave the house without bundling up in layers of clothing, and donning fur-lined boots and bobble hats. They’d have to pick their way over ice, there would be snow-ploughs clearing the snowdrifts, and frostbite warnings.

“Honestly, it’s not that cold,” I repeat, as we put jumpers on and head out the house, unencumbered by coats and other weighty items (my sweater dating back to about 2006 as, since moving to the UAE, I’ve entered a winter fashion time warp due to only buying summer clothes).

Our Filipino nanny, too, seems to think it’s biting cold and has taken to swaddling herself in a hoody, scarf and socks round the house. I’m thinking I’d better buy her a hot-water bottle quick, or the snuggle blanket with sleeves on sale in New Look.

And spare a thought for the camels in leg warmers (joke).

I do wonder if living in a desert climate for the past five years might have thinned our blood, although to be fair, the fact that our homes have no heating, are draughty and have floors made from marble does mean you feel it when the temperature plunges from the 35 degrees or so that we’re used to.

So, there you have it: a few years of desert living and you’ll find your family becoming quite reptilian, minus the dry, scaly skin. Not only that, but you’ll also take great delight in sipping steaming hot chocolate and wearing tights (even if, by midday, it’s on the warm-side again).

You’ve been warned – NO ice cream!

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I must stop blogging about the weather. I know.

Especially as the UK (where I’m hoping to travel to on Friday!) has been brought to a standstill this week with the arrival of an icy but pretty snowmageddon.

My Facebook page is populated by snowmen with carrot noses and stony eyes, and BBC online has kept us updated with ‘As it happened’ reports on the disruption and chaos – so, I’m well aware that here in the UAE we’re getting off, er, very lightly.

But we’re actually experiencing something of a ‘cold snap’ ourselves.

Really. We are. The mercury has dropped to morning lows of 9 to 10°C, and with hard, marble floors, flimsy summer duvets and no heating, it actually feels really chilly.

Pounding the school run in Dubai this week (boot envy, moi?)

Pounding the school run this week (boot envy, moi?)

This happens every year at about this time (see, as proof, last year’s blog post on the desert freezing over), but we tend to forget about it as it doesn’t last very long – say, a couple of weeks – and when it leaps back to 40°C the cooler temps are hard to imagine.

The best thing is being able to wear different clothes – with a sleeve, even Ugg boots and a scarf if you can find these items in the depths of your closet. My mind starts tripping with wardrobe opportunities – until I remember all my winter clothes are from 2005.

I love this weather, I really do; it’s such a breath of fresh air, but the funny thing is how seriously folks in Dubai with outdoor jobs take it – donning several layers, bobble hats, big, thick coats and sometimes ear muffs (no kidding!) like they’re Arctic explorers.

My top prize, though, goes to gulfnews.com for this hilarious news piece, written by the bureau chief in all seriousness and entitled ‘People shiver in the bitterly cold nights’.

After reporting that the temperature had dropped to a biting 2°C in inland desert areas, the article warns people to wear warm clothes, not to stay in desert camps or open places overnight, and – it gets better – to have hot drinks and avoid ice cream as a precaution against colds and flu.

As a former resident of Minneapolis in the Midwest of America, where we survived temperatures that, with the wind chill, dipped to minus 42°C – and where you could get frostbite on your ear lobes in five minutes – I wore my gym shorts on the school run this morning without fear.

xxxxx

Snow, snow, go away – by Friday. I am (fingers crossed) London bound!

Rain day in Dubai

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What I really want to write is a raging post on gun control in a country I love – but although my husband and kids are American, I’m not, and perhaps I just don’t understand.

Yesterday, after hugging my children, I yelled at the iPad, my blood boiling – incensed by some of the comments left by absolute morons (who can’t even spell) on British journalist Piers Morgan’s blog. I’ve no doubt my outburst was futile.

So, I’ll spare you the rant about what to me is intuitive – and by way of distraction from a tragic topic that’s left me shocked, horrified and saddened to the core, I’ll be very British, and talk about the weather instead.

Here in Dubai, we don’t get much adverse weather. Some people would say it goes from boiling hot to hot, but this isn’t actually true: at 9am this morning, the outside temperature reading on the car told me it was a chilly, jumper-worthy 16 degrees.

The cars were making waves just outside my work

The cars were making waves just outside my work

But it wasn’t the ‘cold spell’ that was the talk of the town today: it was the rain. Lashings of it, pouring down from low-hanging granite clouds and forming small, muddy lakes on the city’s drenched roads.

Puddle-loving children always get excited due to the novelty factor (the lack of variety has led one school that actually has weather on the curriculum to lay on a field trip to Ski Dubai – the lucky kids).

And for the grown-ups – who hail from the UK at least – the dull, wet, languid weather transports us on a metaphorical journey across oceans, back to Blighty, easing a little of the homesickness that can set in as Christmas approaches.

But what starts out as a rare treat can quickly become a proverbial pain in the arse as you start worrying about flooding on water-logged highways, remember that the wipers on the SUV don’t work (they disintegrated, through lack of use), and realise you have no rain clothes. Not even a brolly.

“Look Mummy, those people have an umbrella,” squealed LB in delight, as I dragged him in the pelting rain across a soggy football field to his classroom this morning. “Why don’t we have one?”

The wettest ever Dubai school drop-off completed, I got back in the car to go to work, fully expecting the roads to be chaos and for it to take twice as long, when I realised something. The usual 10-15-minute bottleneck – leaving the community that hosts my youngest son’s school – was, to my surprise, only six or seven cars long.

Half of Dubai must be taking a rain day, I smiled to myself, imagining my fellow commuters curled up at home with hot cocoa and watching Jaws on telly. What a good and sensible idea.

The next time the heavens open over Dubai, I'm having a duvet day too

The next time the heavens open over Dubai, I’m having a duvet day too