Another rainy day in the desert 5 February, 2007
Posted by Maranello in Everything doesn't need a category....trackback
‘Wonderful’ weather…?!
Dubai has been enjoying some exceptionally wet weather of late, including yesterday. A pain for Brits like me (particularly those who once lived under the perma-grey skies of Central Lancashire, the ‘drizzle capital’ of …ermm… the North-West?), but wonderful for the rain-starved bedouins, I guess. Not that there are many of the latter in Dubai. And to be fair, there are far too many of the former. It almost feels like London, though there are probably more Caucasians here than in most parts of London, so this place is probably too ‘Western’ to be London.
I digress.
Yes, the weather. It has been raining a lot. This year’s rainfall in the UAE has been the heaviest in a decade, according to the Ministry of Environment and Water; which presumably means that instead of the unusual drizzling for half an hour on one December afternoon and 15 minutes on another January morning, it has actually rained properly on more than a dozen separate occasions (for instance, these in November, December and January), sometimes for a whole day or longer – remarkably unusual and decidedly unprecedented.
Not that any of this is a surprise.
As he (sallaallahu ‘alaihi wassalam) said:
The Last Hour will not come . . . till the land of Arabia becomes meadows and rivers.
extract from Sahih Muslim: Book 005, Number 2208
He (s) never told a lie, and He (s) was never told a lie…
Without talking about the scary issue of the Last Hour, are people enjoying these rainfalls? What do they do out there, when it rains? And does it provide some relief from the relentless heat? (I know, not many people walk around the streets of the posh Emirates, but travel in air conditioned bliss, but still :) )
And finally, how’s the driving? More/less/business as usual in terms of accidents?