Dubai welcomes first showers, cooler weather

residents woke up early on monday morning to light rainfall and a surprisingly cooler weather. The city’s skyline remained overcast throughout yesterday as the first seasonal shower was felt across different parts of the city.

“Rain in Dubai is almost an auspicious event. We didn’t even want to stay in bed. The children were out, playing in the rain,” Maya Nilanjan, a Karama resident, said.

Overjoyed residents tweeted and changed their Facebook statuses celebrating the rain as a sign ushering in colder weather.

Emirati Natural Sciences expert Dr Ahmed al Thani told Khaleej Times: “It’s a sign that winter’s coming. Even in the old days, the first rain would be a sign for bedouin tribes to collect harvest and prepare their tents and camels for winter. It would coincide with the rising of the star ‘Suhail’ sometime in late September. Now the first rain comes later in the year, but the principle is still the same.”

According to the National Centre Meterological Sciences (NCMS), the cloudy weather will continue over the next few days with chances of scattered rain across the emirate.

Temperatures are expected to fall further as strong winds blow along the UAE coastline.

The temperature in Dubai will potentially see minimums of 16 to 23 degrees celsius and maximums of 32-25 degrees, with coastal and mountainous areas of the country seeing even lower figures in the coming days.

Jason Kirch, a Dubai-based orthodontist and a self-proclaimed outdoorsman, heads to the hills at every chance he can get. Seeing the Eid al Adha break as the best opportunity to go camping, Jason and a group of six adventure-seekers set up camp in the Lehbab desert along the UAE-Oman border.

“We pack for every possible climate. When it started raining this morning the temperature must have been around 16 degrees. It was amazing, especially with the sunrise in the horizon,” he said .