UAE struggles to cope after epic deluge inundates arid desert nation
The United Arab Emirates struggled on Thursday to recover from the heaviest recorded rainfall ever to hit the desert nation, as its main airport worked to restore normal operations even as ¥oodwater still covered portions of major highways and roads.
The UAE typically sees little rainfall in its arid desert climate.
However, a massive storm about which forecasters had been warning about for days blew through the country’s seven sheikhdoms.
By the end of Tuesday, more than 142 millimetre of rainfall had soaked Dubai for over 24 hours. An average year sees 94.7 millimetre of rain at Dubai International Airport.
The UAE’s drainage systems quickly became overwhelmed, ¥ooding out neighbourhoods, business districts and even portions of the 12-lane Sheikh Zayed Road highway running through Dubai.
The state-run
WAM
Residents move their belongings on kayaks at a flooded residential complex in Dubai, UAE on Thursday.
news agency called the rain “a historic weather event” that surpassed “anything documented
since the start of data collection in 1949.”
In a message to the nation late on Wednesday, leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi, said authorities would “quickly work on studying the condition of infrastructure throughout the UAE and to limit the damage caused.”
On Thursday, people waded through oil-slicked ¥oodwater to reach cars earlier abandoned, checking to see if their engines still ran. Tanker trucks with vacuums began reaching some areas outside of Dubai’s downtown core for the rst time as well. Schools remain closed until next week.
Authorities have oered no overall damage or injury information from the ¥oods, which killed at least one person.
Doubt on cloud seeding
The ¥ooding sparked speculation that the UAE’s aggressive campaign of cloud seeding — ¥ying small planes through clouds dispersing chemicals aimed at getting rain to fall — may have contributed to the deluge. But experts said the storm systems that proEmirati duced the rain were forecast well in advance and that cloud seeding alone would not have caused such ¥ooding.
Je Masters, a meteorologist for Yale Climate Connections, said the ¥ooding in Dubai was caused by an unusually strong low pressure system that drove many rounds of heavy thunderstorms.
Scientists also say climate change is responsible for more intense and more frequent extreme storms, droughts, ¥oods and wild
res around the world.