Saudi Arabian authorities closed schools in several districts as flash floods overwhelmed highways, the latest example of torrential rains interrupting life in the dry Gulf.
On Wednesday, viral footage showed partially drowned automobiles having to drive through standing water in Qassim’s center sector, one of the most hit overnight.
The National Meteorological Centre issued red alerts for Qassim and other locations, including the eastern Gulf province, Riyadh, the capital, and Medina, which borders the Red Sea.
It warned that there would be “heavy rain with strong wind, lack of horizontal visibility, hail, torrential rains, and thunderbolts”. Schools in Eastern Province and Riyadh likewise suspended in-person classes and relocated them online.
The Medina Education Department shared photos on X of maintenance personnel repairing electrical and air conditioning devices and eliminating standing water from classrooms.
There was some standing water on Riyadh’s roads on Wednesday, but traffic was not seriously hampered.
Rainstorms and flooding are common in Saudi Arabia, particularly during the winter, and larger, more densely populated towns may suffer from drainage.
Such issues occur on an annual basis in Jeddah, a port city on the Red Sea coast, where locals have long complained about substandard infrastructure.
Floods killed 123 people in the city in 2009, and another 10 two years later. This week’s high rainfall in Saudi Arabia followed the region’s strong rains in mid-April, which killed 21 people in Oman and four in the United Arab Emirates, where rainfall was the heaviest since records began 75 years ago.
In research published last week, a distinguished group of experts concluded that global warming driven by fossil fuel emissions “most likely” intensified the rains.
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