Desert city of Dubai floods as UAE hit by heaviest rainfall in 75 years | Hacker News Reader

Desert city of Dubai floods as UAE hit by heaviest rainfall in 75 years

theguardian.com

67 pointscroes23 comments

The news is reporting on Dubai for clicks due to its name recognition, but Oman is getting it much worse due to mountain/valley geometry similar to Austin.

Having been to both, I was very worried about Oman. It's close to UAE and while the UAE is generally very flat, Oman is quite mountainous - so this much water would be amplified in the valleys and ravines between rises. It looks like Oman+UAE have had 20 deaths confirmed so far, with 18 of those being in Oman.

Geographically, driving around Muscat (capital of Oman, where mountains run right up to the ocean coastline) feels a lot like driving around Austin, very windy and hilly roads with lots of greenery in an arid climate. Culturally, Muscat is a really beautiful city, much more friendly and laid back and colorful than the rest of the Gulf (vs. Saudi/Bahrain/Qatar/UAE/Kuwait).

I grew up in the Alps and water is indeed much more dangerous in mountainous areas, especially if you happen to live in a place where it rarely rains. Because when it rains all kinds of things will take their path down the mountains.

Now the people in the alps adjusted for that over the centuries of living there, with the price paid in destroyed houses and killed people. Many of those lessons stayed, some had to be relearned, because of hubris.

My parents were recently in Oman and I can't really imagine that the region is prepared for this.

They're used to floods in Muscat - the Muttrah Souq (biggest market, about 5000 vendors) is part of the very historical floodpath and it floods 1-2 feet deep at least annually. Generally the merchants don't lose their merchandise to the floods, even when it was built in the 1800's the shops were raised up several feet and the corridors were built with the intention to channel the flow of floodwater to the sea, just 45 meters from the entrance of the Souq.

But something of this magnitude really never happens, and I agree with you they were likely as unprepared for it as Texas would be for 8 inches of snow.

A photo of the market from earlier this year: https://www.omanobserver.om/article/1149558/oman/weather/tim...

2014 TripAdvisor report: https://en.tripadvisor.com.hk/ShowUserReviews-g1940497-d5022...

They were not so lucky during Cyclone Shaheen in 2021 which had 15 meters of swell -- obviously with one of the main entrances to the souq just 45 meters from the sea that was not kind to them. https://www.omanobserver.om/article/1149558/oman/weather/tim...

I lived in much smaller mountains. Our house was just by a river about a mile from the start of the mountain side.

Whenever there was a lot of rain up the mountains, my parents would keep watch during the night as it takes as little as 20 minutes from the start of rain to the wall of water reaching our location.

I think "heaviest rainfall in 75 years" undersells it. It's not like there was a heavier one 75 years ago, that is the record holder or something. It's just that records only go back 75 years.

A "100 year event" would have around 66mm of rain in 24 hours, and this one had over 140mm. It's likely the worst in several centuries.

Wow 5.5 inches did a number on them. In my part of Los Angeles we got 12 inches in 24 hours* a few weeks back. It was pretty bad but thanks to our hideous concrete river we didn’t have the Dubai experience.

* https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-02-09/climate-...

That is some crazy flooding. I have never seen that much water in an airport. Absolutely insane images.

Do you need to do some special maintenance on landing gear that has been submerged in water?

Dubai's Floods Weren't Caused by Cloud Seeding

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40064128

Maybe or maybe not. Death Valley had similar abnormal rains recently.

My congratulations.

Even if it causes some damages or kill somebody, the living conditions for the huge majority will improve dramatically this year. Water means life, and water in the soil is liquid money. Refilling aquifers will be the best thing happening in a lot of time in that area.

Maybe is a good time to try to fix some of this water at soil surface using plants also.

Unfortunately there's very little in the way of aquifers in Dubai and the Northern Emirates.

The ground is mostly sand, and does not hold much water.

Short stints of extreme rainfall don’t do anything beneficial. You need existing mass water storage, and even if you can keep the water it doesn’t magically solve the problem of limited nutrients in sand (and in fact can reduce the amount of nutrients in future due to runoff)

The lack of nutrients, and the dearth of plants that can retain water while also handling the more common case of no water and extreme heat further limit any idea of what planting crops to prevent run off.

You can store it permanently by daming up wadis?

You gonna dam up a wadi overnight?

The UAE might be one of the few places on earth that would try. I'd bet they're seriously considering building a system like those giant flood mitigation tanks under Tokyo. Both to avoid severe flooding, and to bank a huge amount of freshwater.

Then, there's no flooding even close to this for decades.

Buy luxury car shares now.

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