Emirates Meteorology Blog

Almost certainly, October is generally a calm and dry month, marking the transition between summer and winter with almost no rainfall in the UAE. During a normal October, cold fronts are still far away (somewhere in the Middeteranian), the Indian Monsoon is retreating, and tropical lows in the Arabian Sea could be forming (sometimes). So, the UAE and the Arabian Gulf countries become largely islolated from any notable weather forces. But there have been a few of extreme October months in Arabia long time ago. In fact, October proved to be a month where winter and tropical rain are both possible in the UAE even if our average rainfall is zero. Of course, our average is not based on long-term data.

October 1997:

During exceptionally wet winters, October cold fronts are possible but extremely rare. The last time UAE had an October cold front with measurable rainfall was in 1997, which could be our only measurable winter rainfall in October for the last 20-30 years (with only a trace recorded in 1995 and 2000). And I’m not talking about mountainous afternoon thunderstorms that form regulary during the warm months in the UAE.

October 1997 rainfall

October 1948:

This was a strange October. Apparently a tropical storm (cyclone?) hit southeast Oman, and then the tropical (storm/low/depression?) moved northward to the UAE and Oman. The storm dumped a lot of rainfall to SE Oman (100-300mm estimated) before bringing heavy rain to the UAE (around 50mm). While I didn’t find other sources online that talk about this storm in details, the below rainfall map tell part of the story.

October 1948 rainfall

October 1925:

There are talks of severe thunderstorms hitting the Arabian Gulf countries during the early days of October 1925. That should have been a very rare and early october cold front I guess. There are talks of how bad it was since many fishermen died and some say there were tornadoes as well. While I can’t prove so many things about it, the rainfall map shows winter rainfall over a large part of Arabia in October 1925. I guess it is too old to have some accurate details  about it.

October 1925 rainfall

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Coming back to October 2009, it seems everything (so far) is behaving normally. No early cold fronts nor intrusive tropical lows.
But I’m keeping an eye on late October.