As a desert city, Dubai regularly receives rainbow of flakes, but some people do experience isolated showers from time to time. However, the recent torrential downfall of rain that led to massive destruction was not among the norm and has caught many offguard. The sudden torrential rains lasting for hours submerged the streets, including major highways, and resisted the drainage systems, thus impacted on traffic flow and property damage.
The occurrence of this phenomenon was also due to the fact that many circumstances played their role. The primary reasons were a weather system, where a large amount of water and the high levels of humidity were present, respectively, which indeed met the required conditions for the lightning, hail and heavy rain. Relatedly, specialists underlined climate change as a possible aggravating element whose effects could involve changing weather patterns all across the world and increasing the frequency of extreme weather events in any given region, for instance, even in the arid lands of the Middle East.
In addition to declaration of state of natural disaster, the city was also affected by: homes getting flooded, stranded vehicles and general public transportation disruption. The imposing effects of flooding were mitigated as the emergency response teams worked day-night to deploy emergency repair equipment and boats to aid the flooded occupants and businesses.
Despite the fact that Dubai had experienced unusual weather patterns in the past, but the magnitude and duration of the current unforeseen event that the city witnessed showed the evidence about the necessity of strong infrastructure and the mechanisms to prevent the harsh impacts of extreme events in future Envisioning a planet as the climate change take shape, cities everywhere do need to adapt by investing in resilience strategies that are appropriate to tackle increasingly severe weather stuffs like the Dubai airport witnessed.
