The United Arab Emirates (UAE) experienced more rain than it had in 75 years earlier this week, seriously flooding Dubai’s international airport and temporarily transforming the desert city’s streets into rivers.
More than 142 millimetres of rain fell on Dubai on Tuesday, about the amount it usually sees in an 18 month period, The Guardian reports. Al Ain, a city on the UAE-Oman border, received 254.8 millimetres of rain in less than 24 hours, according to the UAE government’s media office.
At least one person in the UAE has died due to extreme weather – a 70-year-old man whose car was swept away by floods in Ras Al Khaimah (one of the seven emirates). Flash flooding in neighbouring Oman has killed almost 20.
[See more: Global climate change is behind the rise in severe typhoons]
Motorists abandoned their cars, water rushed through a shopping mall, aeroplanes looked like boats as they tried to navigate Dubai’s flooded airport and many flights were cancelled.
Dubai airport’s CEO Paul Griffiths told local media that the deluge was “uncharted territory” for the UAE. “In living memory, I don’t think anyone has ever seen conditions like it.”
The UAE’s National Center of Meteorology denied that the unprecedented amount of rain was caused by cloud-seeding – a practice used in the emirates to increase the chances of precipitation. Experts told Reuters that the deluge was instead caused by a weather system exacerbated by climate change.
