The United Arab Emirates is today attempting to dry out after the heaviest rain ever recorded in the desert nation caused utter chaos – but there are suspicions the horrific flooding in Dubai and elsewhere may have been self-inflicted.
The typically scorching UAE heavily relies on cloud-seeding – a technique which sees aircraft fire salt flares into clouds to speed up condensation and induce rainfall – to provide its groundwater.
Flight-tracking data analysed by the Associated Press showed one aircraft affiliated with the UAE’s cloud-seeding efforts flew around the country on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Ahmed Habib, a meteorologist at the UAE’s National Centre for Meteorology (NCM), told Bloomberg several cloud-seeding sorties were flown in the days before the unprecedented rainfall hit.
As speculation over the cloud-seeding grew, the NCM later denied in comments to CNBC that the operation had taken place on Tuesday in the hours before the storm – but confirmed the operation was performed on Sunday and Monday.
Shocking videos shared on social media showed how cars were filled with water, forcing hundreds of motorists to abandon their vehicles and swim to safety. Some vehicles were completely submerged, with the top of their roofs barely breaking the water’s surface.
Some wealthy drivers in luxury motors bragged of ‘floating’ their way through the carnage – but most saw their vehicles stall as they became stuck in the deluge.
Rainwater also poured into homes, pushing people out of their houses and into the streets to seek shelter in higher structures.
The horrendous floods swamped the airport and many of the surrounding roads, forcing dozens of flights to be cancelled as travellers crammed into the concourse to shelter from the torrential downpour.
The country’s hereditary rulers offered no overall damage information or injury information for the nation, as some slept in their flooded vehicles on Tuesday night.
But In Ras al-Khaimah, the country’s northernmost emirate, police said one 70-year-old man died when his vehicle was swept away by floodwater.
An incredible time lapse video shared on social media this morning showed how the thunderstorms rolled in and the sky became black before the city was obscured by a blanket of rain.