Tailbacks snaked along waterlogged, six-lane expressways after up to 255 mm (9.7 inches) of rain, the most since records began 75 years ago, fell on the desert United Arab Emirates on Tuesday.At least one person was killed after a 70-year-old man was swept away in his car in Ras Al-Khaimah, one of the oil-rich nation’s seven emirates, police said.
Rain also fell in Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. However, rains were acute across the UAE. One possible contributor may have been “cloud seeding“, in which small planes operated by the govt fly through clouds burning special salt flares. Those flares can increase precipitation.
Several reports quoted meteorologists at the National Center for Meteorology as saying they flew six or seven cloud-seeding flights before the rains. Flight-tracking data analyzed by AP showed one aircraft affiliated with the UAE’s cloud-seeding efforts flew around the country Monday.
The National, an English state-linked newspaper in Abu Dhabi, quoted an anonymous official at the centre as saying no cloud seeding took place on Tuesday, without acknowledging any earlier flights.
The country, which heavily relies on energy-hungry desalination plants to provide water, conducts cloud seeding in part to increase its dwindling, limited groundwater. Rain is unusual in the UAE, an arid, Arabian Peninsula nation, but occurs periodically during the cooler winter months. Many roads and other areas lack drainage given the lack of regular rainfall, causing flooding. Scientists also say climate change in general is responsible for more intense and frequent extreme storms, droughts, floods, wildfires across the world.
Power outages were reported around Dubai, which was dotted with flooded areas and submerged and abandoned cars. One road tunnel near the airport was completely flooded to a depth of several metres. As sunny skies returned Wednesday, stories emerged of residents stuck in cars and offices overnight. “It was one of the most horrific situations I ever experienced,” said one worker after his 15-min commute turned into a 12-hour saga on flooded roads. Schools will remain closed until next week, officials said, underscoring the difficulty of the clean-up.
(With inputs from AP & AFP)