A spectacular summer thunderstorm is raging across Southern UAE, southwest of Abu Dhabi. The last few days have seen recurring summer thunderstorms over western and southern UAE, while the rest of the UAE experiences hot and sunny weather.
Archive for August, 2011
Summer afternoon thunderstorms have been raging accross Oman mountains, UAE mountains and interior areas over the last few days. Brief period of heavy rain, hail, high winds, and falling temperatures accompany such localized thunderstorms. Dust storms usually form nearby the storms due to high winds kicking up dust. Tuesday could bring even more summer afternoon showers and thunderstorms to parts of Al Ain and western interior areas, and surrounding places.
An active spill of the summer showers and thunderstorms over parts of Yemen and Saudi Arabia unleashed heavy downpours due to a surge of tropical moisture and weakening high pressure. The below image from NASA TRMM shows excessive rainfall of around 400mm over eastern Yemen. Moreover, heavy thunderstorms hit southern Saudi Arabia and resulted in flooded roads, trapping residents, with reports of missing bodies as well according to a local Saudi newspaper. It seems such an event is becoming annual as in summer 2010 a similar event occured.
The same trend is expected to continue for the remainder of August. As odd as it might sound, the summer months are known for spotty afternoon thundershowers over and near the mountains of Oman and the UAE. The last few days brought more afternoon showers to Hajar mountains, and even some interior desert areas of the UAE where confluent winds, extreme heating, and rising air helped break through the otherwise stable atmosphere, resulting in localized and breif afternoon thundershowers. However, such thundershowers pose risk of high winds. You can see below two interesting areas of thunderstorms erupting over Hajar mountains and [ Read More ]
