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

Heavy rains have hit the United Arab Emirates, flooding major highways and disrupting flights at Dubai international airport – in what the government has described as the largest amount of rainfall in the past 75 years.

At least one person was killed, a 70-year-old man who was swept away in his car in Ras Al Khaimah, one of the country’s seven emirates, police said, surpassing “anything documented since the start of data collection in 1949”.

The rains began on Monday night, and by Tuesday evening, more than 142mm (5.59in) had soaked the desert city of Dubai, normally the average amount it gets in a year and a half.

Photograph: Anadolu/Getty ImagesThe National Center for Meteorology in a post on X urged residents to “take all the precautions … and to stay away from areas of flooding and water accumulation”.

Photograph: Abdel Hadi Ramahi/ReutersEarlier the weather system caused floods across Bahrain, and left 18 dead in Oman, on the eastern edge of the Arabian peninsula, on Sunday and Monday, according to Agence France-Presse, including 10 schoolchildren swept away in a vehicle with an adult.

Human-caused climate breakdown is supercharging extreme weather across the world, driving more frequent and more deadly disasters from heatwaves and wildfires to floods.