Flash floods and hail hit Al Ain as thunderstorms sweep into east coast
Many people baked in the summer heat on Friday but parts of the UAE were lashed by flash floods, thunderstorms and lightning.
Videos posted online showed powerful 4x4s struggling to navigate flooded streets in Al Ain.
Other videos posted on Friday showed driving hail, dark skies and lashing rain.
The footage was posted to Storm Centre, a social media channel that tracks the country’s weather, and made clear the extent of the deluge.
In one video, two children can be seeing playing in the rain, while elsewhere in the east several wadis overflowed.
The downpours stretched from Khor Fakkan in the north to Kalba in the south. Al Ain was hit particularly badly.
The National Centre of Meteorology also posted videos of the weather on its social media channels.
In one, a hand can be seen catching a large hailstone. Another shows lashing rain and lightning storms over Al Ain.
The NCM had warned earlier on Friday that rains could hit eastern parts of the country because of winds that bring thunderclouds from the Indian Ocean. It cautioned yesterday that more could be on the way up until this afternoon. Gusts of up to 45kph could also kick up dust clouds. During the summer, the monsoons bring water-soaked clouds from India to the Arabian Peninsula.
This causes the phenomenon known as khareef in Oman – in which the desert turns green – and it also brings rain to the UAE’s mountainous east.
Cloud-seeding planes are also active during the summer. About eight missions were conducted within the six weeks to July 8 this year – up from five last year.
Seeding involves shooting salt flares into a cloud.
The salt naturally attracts water particles which then collide, become bigger and hopefully fall as rain. But how much is hard to quantify, with the NCM stating more studies are needed.
“In winter we usually have clouds that come from west to east,” said Khalid Al Obaidly, head of cloud seeding at the NCM.
“Many don’t touch the country during the winter so we don’t do seeding.”