Funny weather we're 'avin...
Winter. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness - well, sort of.
I am curious about the number of people who are commenting on the current weather, in that they claim it to be unusual in some way. Is it? Last year we had a significant amount of rain, and it aroused a fair bit of comment. This year is supposedly colder than for many previous, but again, is it really? Are floods more frequent, or merely more fervently reported?
Given the relatively transient population of Dubai, certainly those people who I talk to have often experienced only one or two years here, and consequently have little to compare. Is this the coldest it has been for years? Difficult to answer if it's only your second winter. I do know that rainfall averages here can vary wildly (anywhere between 3 inches and 35 inches in a given year), and that the theoretically wettest quarter has only just commenced, but read last year that the totals then were actually completely normal - it was the preceding 4 or 5 years that had in fact been exceptionally dry. Gut feeling says this seems entirely plausible, though I am not enough of a geologist to estimate the amount of rain it takes to carve out some of the wadis around here. I can only imagine that the amount is not small.
So as people shiver in temperatures that struggle to reach the low 20s (where I come from, that's barbecue weather!), I watch the greening of the desert and the press reporting of heater sales with equal amusement.
I am curious about the number of people who are commenting on the current weather, in that they claim it to be unusual in some way. Is it? Last year we had a significant amount of rain, and it aroused a fair bit of comment. This year is supposedly colder than for many previous, but again, is it really? Are floods more frequent, or merely more fervently reported?
Given the relatively transient population of Dubai, certainly those people who I talk to have often experienced only one or two years here, and consequently have little to compare. Is this the coldest it has been for years? Difficult to answer if it's only your second winter. I do know that rainfall averages here can vary wildly (anywhere between 3 inches and 35 inches in a given year), and that the theoretically wettest quarter has only just commenced, but read last year that the totals then were actually completely normal - it was the preceding 4 or 5 years that had in fact been exceptionally dry. Gut feeling says this seems entirely plausible, though I am not enough of a geologist to estimate the amount of rain it takes to carve out some of the wadis around here. I can only imagine that the amount is not small.
So as people shiver in temperatures that struggle to reach the low 20s (where I come from, that's barbecue weather!), I watch the greening of the desert and the press reporting of heater sales with equal amusement.
posted by EyeOnDubai at 3:57 am
2 Comments:
That's Autumn, mists and fruitfulness.
The first year I was here it rained for two hours on one day I think. Apparently it hadn't rained more than one hour the previous three years or something (I got here in 2001).
So the rain of the past two years is considered a bit unusual, for people that have been here around a decade or so.
Ah Secret, can't I even misquote Keats for ironic (and local) effect?
Thanks for your insight - I'm interested in this disparity between short- and long-term recollections. Such research as I have been able to do does suggest that current rainfall is 'normal', and that the past decade or so has been exceptionally dry.
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