Dubai Flooding 16th/17th April 2024

[Simon Culling]

There has been an extraordinary amount of rain in the normally dry city of Dubai and more generally in the UAE. At the airport site and in the 24 hours to 18UTC on Tuesday 16th April, 159mm of rain fell - and this is nearly twice the annual rainfall total. Significant flooding resulted.

Dubai time is 4 hours ahead of UTC.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68831408

[Simon Culling]

There have been a number of stories circulating on the wonderful social media that this flooding event was caused by cloud seeding. The whole point of the trials involving cloud seeding was to try and prompt rainfall from clouds that were not producing much rain rather than enhancing rainfall from those already producing plenty. It is amazing how these stories are still believed by some.

BBC did a partial job of debunking this - they could have done a bit better than this:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68839043

[Simon Culling]

A great photo of a plane moving around the flooded Dubai International Airport. Not sure I would be happy to be a passenger on that plane!!

[Simon Culling]

Nice summary of events from the Royal Meteorological Society in this link:

https://www.rmets.org/metmatters/dubai- ... ud-seeding