Storm dumps record rain across UAE and floods Dubai’s airport
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The desert nation of the United Arab Emirates attempted to dry out Wednesday from the heaviest rain ever recorded there after a deluge flooded out Dubai International Airport, disrupting flights through the world’s busiest airfield for international travel.
The state-run WAM news agency called Tuesday’s rain “a historic weather event” that surpassed “anything documented since the start of data collection in 1949.” That’s before the discovery of crude oil in the energyrich nation.
Rain also fell in Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. However, the rain was acute across the UAE.
The flooding sparked speculation that cloud-seeding — flying small planes through clouds dispersing chemicals aimed at getting rain to fall — might have caused the deluge. But experts said the storm systems that produced the rain were forecast well in advance and that cloudseeding would not have caused such flooding.
Several reports quoted meteorologists at the National Centre for Meteorology as saying they flew six or seven cloud-seeding flights before the rain. Flighttracking data analyzed by the Associated Press showed one aircraft affiliated with the UAE’s cloud-seeding efforts flew around the country on Monday.
The National, an English-language, state-linked newspaper in Abu Dhabi, quoted an anonymous official at the centre on Wednesday as saying no cloud-seeding took place on Tuesday, without acknowledging any earlier flights.
The centre did not respond to questions on Wednesday.
The UAE, which heavily relies on energy-hungry desalination plants to provide water, conducts cloud-seeding in part to increase its dwindling, limited groundwater.
Jeff Masters, a meteorologist for Yale Climate Connections, said the flooding in Dubai was caused by an unusually strong low pressure system that drove many rounds of heavy thunderstorms.
“You don’t need cloud-seeding’s influence to account for the record deluge in Dubai,” Masters said.
Scientists also say climate change in general is responsible for more intense and more frequent extreme storms, droughts, floods and wildfires around the world. Dubai hosted the United Nations’ COP28 climate talks last year.
Rising temperatures and other effects of global warming long have been viewed as a threat to life in the already-baking region.
The rain began late Monday, soaking the sands and roadways of Dubai with 20 millimetres of rain, according to meteorological data collected at Dubai International Airport.
The storms intensified around 9 a.m. local time Tuesday and continued throughout the day, dumping more rain and hail.
By the end of Tuesday, more than 142 millimetres of rainfall had soaked Dubai over 24 hours. An average year sees 94.7 millimetres of rain at Dubai International Airport, a hub for the longhaul carrier Emirates.
At the airport, standing water lapped on taxiways as aircraft landed. Arrivals were halted on Tuesday night and passengers struggled to reach terminals through the floodwater covering surrounding roads.
One couple, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to speak freely in a country with strict laws that criminalize critical speech, called the situation at the airport “absolute carnage.”
“Recovery will take some time,” the airport said on the social platform X.