Two weeks after enduring record-breaking downpours that experts linked to climate change, the UAE again demonstrated its resilience as heavy rains returned on Thursday, May 2, 2024, leading to the closure of schools and many companies.

According to the National Center of Meteorology, a lightning storm with strong winds raced through the oil-rich kingdom overnight, dropping more than 50 millimeters (two inches) of rain in some places before 8:00 am.

According to a spokesperson, parts of Dubai, the World’s Financial Center, experienced flooding, and the airport, the busiest for international passenger traffic, had to cancel 13 flights and divert five more. 

As a proactive measure, Public Sector offices closed, schools shifted to remote learning, and the State-owned Emirates and its sibling airline, FlyDubai, issued timely alerts to travellers.

However, the amount of rain was not as much as it was, on April 16, 2024, when a record 259.5 mm of rain caused massive road closures for days, four fatalities, and the cancellation of over 2,000 flights.

On Thursday, May 2, 2024, there was minimal traffic on Dubai’s typically congested six-lane freeways, and vehicles were left abandoned on flooded roadways close to the vast Ibn Battuta Mall. Since Dubai’s drainage system frequently cannot handle heavy rainfall, trucks that pump water were positioned in some flooded regions.

Last month’s rainfall, which also claimed the lives of 21 people in neighboring Oman, was the heaviest in UAE, a Federation of seven sheikhdoms with a majority of expatriates, since 1949.

According to World Weather Attribution, a scientific network that evaluates how climate change affects extreme weather occurrences, the deluge was “most likely” made worse by global warming brought on by the use of fossil fuels.

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