Festive day & Holidays have started, and Dubai Metro has extended its operating hours to cater to increased demand during Eid holidays. From Monday to November 20 (Saturday) Metro will operate from 6am until 1am.

However, trains on November 19 will operate from 1pm to 1am,

Similarly, all major bus stations will remain open from 5am to midnight during the Eid holidays and vehicle parking in the paid zones will also be free from November 15 to 19.

The trains will halt at each station for about 20 seconds and the frequency of the trains will be every eight minutes from 6am to 4pm and every six minutes after 4pm until late night which is the peak time.

A maximum of 22 trains will serve passengers during the holidays.

The RTA official warned commuters to abide by the rules of safety and security in the Metro stations and on board the trains and buses as these regulations have been adopted for the safety of everyone.

While the rain & beautiful weather is prevailing across northern emirates people are advise to exercise caution while on roads.

It started on Friday, continued till Saturday. Saturday & Sunday was a HAVOC for those who dare to drive between Dubai & Sharjah

The Dubai Police’s Operations Room reported 170 road accidents during the first hours of the heavy rains that lashed the country on Saturday night.

Colonel Omar Al Shamsi, Director of
Dubai Police’s Command and Control Room, said there were 21 serious road accidents, 16 moderate accidents and 133 minor accidents. Colonel Al Shamsi said the control room also received 3,415 phone calls for help.

It will be a while before conditions return to normalcy.

Over the weekend the UAE faced rains some parts received drizzle, weather is at best, but the road conditions are disastrous. Abu Dhabi is worst HIT, so does Dubai. 909 accidents were reported, including 50 from cars that skidded or flipped over Atleast nine people are reported dead and 17 injured on wet roads in UAE.

Extreme Caution is to be practiced by the motorists to drive safely, reduce speed and maintain safe distances from the cars ahead of them during the wet weather

Though rains and the weather around them is always pleasant and a nice change from the usual ‘sunny side’ of Dubai, too much of something is bad enough, as they say.

Its been raining pretty hard since the past couple of days and now has come to a point of being a pain for the general public.

The met office predicts a record breaking monsoon season that will surpass the highest recorded over the years of 81.9 mm in January.

I’m getting a lot of pictures from people in different areas, telling their tales of battling for a ‘business as usual’, and so must the readers, but Gulf News summarizes them best here.

Let’s all enjoy the best of what the weather has to offer!

We’re moving into summer now and the weather is starting to reach uncomfortable levels. Daytime we’re getting a degree or two either side of 40C (104F) in the shade and nightime down to around 30C (86F). That’s OK but we get high humidity with it, the ‘discomfort factor’, and that’s staring to build too. We had 90% a couple of days ago and that’s really uncomfortable.

Air conditioners are being used much more than a few weeks ago but we save electricity another way…we don’t need to fire-up the water heaters. All you have to do is run the cold tap/faucet until the water in the pipes within the building has run off. As the water from pipes outside, underground, reaches the tap/faucet it comes out hot enough to shower comfortably.

It still seems wierd to me – I’m used to running off cold water until the warm comes through but it’s difficult to adjust to it being the other way around!

Just a follow-up on my fog post because there was a comment asking whether it was real fog in my photo or whether it was something to do with a sandstorm.

No, it’s real, genuine, wet, cold fog.

The sun burns it off, usually by nine or ten in the morning, and here’s another photo in Dubai Marina as it was being burnt off.

Dubai is a small dot on a huge desert landscape, so friends overseas are always surprised when I tell them that that fog has caused chaos on the roads and with air traffic.

We’ve had thick fog the last couple of mornings, 150 road accidents in 2 hours and 25 flights diverted from Dubai International airport. Humidity was 98%, which means thick fog and visibility down to a few metres. Here’s what we get:

Looking out the window from my office, I noticed that the weather seemed cloudy, as if its going to rain soon.

However, with the apparent wind speed, its probably a dust storm.

Any inputs?

A couple of days back, an anonymous emai was circulated in UAE (Dubai), warning people to stay indoors on Friday due to expected storm and winds speed upto 60mph.

Gulf News has printed this article on the issue:

According to Phil Targett, duty forecaster at Dubai International Airport: “We’re not expecting anything dramatic on Friday according to our modelling data. Friday looks like being a relatively average sort of day.”

A Beautiful Rainy day! A Beauty-Full-Of-Rainwater!!

Question is, would I have chosen to go around the town in MY Lambo if it was raining?? (Then again, the only Lambo I own sits on the shelf and is perfectly safe from any kind of hazards!!)

Some more pics of Bank Street at 1330 Hrs:

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