Dubai Airport gets flooded following 'exceptional rain 🌧️

The world's busiest air hub for international passengers confirmed a halt to arrivals at 7:26 pm (1526 GMT) before announcing a "gradual resumption" more than two hours later. Earlier, the airport, which had been expecting over 100 flight arrivals, briefly halted its operations in the chaos caused by the storm. Departure flights experienced delays and cancellations, and access roads to the airport were also flooded. 

Heavy rains have hit the United Arab Emirates, flooding major highways and disrupting flights at Dubai international airport – in what the government has described as the largest amount of rainfall in the past 75 years.

At least one person was killed, a 70-year-old man who was swept away in his car in Ras Al Khaimah, one of the country’s seven emirates, police said, surpassing “anything documented since the start of data collection in 1949”.

The rains began on Monday night, and by Tuesday evening, more than 142mm (5.59in) had soaked the desert city of Dubai, normally the average amount it gets in a year and a half.

Rain also fell in Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, although the precipitation was particularly significant in the UAE.

An average year sees 94.7mm (3.73in) of rain at Dubai international airport, the world’s busiest for international travel and a hub for the long-haul carrier Emirates, which experienced “significant disruption”, it said on Wednesday.

Ahmed Habib, a meteorologist, told Bloomberg the heightened rainfall in the UAE might be attributed to the practice of “cloud seeding” in which government-operated small aircraft release salt flares into clouds to potentially enhance precipitation levels.

Some inland areas of the UAE recorded more than 80mm of rain over 24 hours to 8am on Tuesday, approaching the annual average of about 100mm. Rain is unusual in the UAE, on the arid Arabian peninsula, but occurs periodically during the cooler winter months.

Homes were flooded and vehicles were abandoned on roadways across Dubai as authorities sent tanker trucks into the streets to pump away the water. Many roads and other areas lack drainage given the lack of regular rainfall.