'Apocalyptic' Dubai Flood Floods The Internet, Shaking The Picture-Perfect City

Dubai, the gem of the Middle East.

The city in United Arab Emirates is renowned for its opulence, innovation, and architectural marvels that have transformed it into a global hub for business, tourism, and luxury living.

Dubai is a home for some of the world's superlatives.

What it is not known for, is its ability to deal with water when it comes in huge volumes.

When a torrent of rain fell, it quickly flooded parts of city, turning streets into rivers.

The extreme weather also destroyed a number of structures, and even shut down one of the world’s busiest airport for a time.

While the city has implemented advanced technologies and innovative solutions to treat rainwater, the city that is erected in the middle of a desert, has a soil that is low on organic content, and high in minerals. This prevents it from absorbing water properly.

And because Dubai resides in an arid region, many parts of the city weren't designed to drain water effectively. In these areas, paved surfaces block rain from seeping into the earth below, forcing it into drainage systems that can easily become overwhelmed.

A one day rain effectively transformed Dubai, the picture-perfect city, into a water-filled world in the middle of the desert.

The flood went viral on the internet, when news and other media companies, as well as citizens and tourists upload images and videos of the incident, and created stories about the chaos.

One of the most viral videos, would be the flooded Dubai Airports.

The video depicts a FlyDubai flight landing with its reverse thrust spraying out water.

"It looks dramatic, but it actually isn’t that dramatic,” said Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths

The executive said that the airfield needed at least days to resume operations after halting its usual schedule.

The airport ended up needing 22 tankers with vacuum pumps to get water off its grounds.

The focus was keeping the runways free of water in order to safely operate.

Social media platforms like Twitter, TikTok, and Reddit also saw a surge in memes and reactions.

One of the most viral pieces of content was a video of a cat being rescued while clinging to a submerged vehicle.

Because it's Dubai, a city known for having sportscars, supercars and hypercars, there is no doubt that a handful of those expensive cars have their share of the flood incident.

One of them, would be a Pagani Utopia.

One Instagram user shared a footage of a driving through the flood.

The hypercar is powered by a 6.0-liter twin-turbo V12 engine developed by Mercedes-AMG. It produces 864 hp @ 6000 rpm and 811 lb-ft of torque @ 2800-5900 rpm. The engine can be mated to a 7-speed automated manual transmission or a proper manual.

The event has shaken the image of Dubai, revealing vulnerabilities in its infrastructure to handle such extreme weather events.

The city, known for its modernity and luxury, struggled with the aftermath of the torrential rains, which left much of its outdoor infrastructure underwater.

At first, the flooding sparked discussions about the role of cloud seeding.

This can be described as a technique used to increase rainfall, which the UAE has employed in recent years to address water shortages. However, experts have largely dismissed the idea that cloud seeding was to blame for the floods.

Officials at the country’s National Center of Meteorology have been cited as saying the rain was not caused by cloud seeding.

Even if the program did fly planes through the sky leading up to the storm, it’s very unlikely that the efforts would have produced more rain than was going to fall naturally.

Instead, they pointed to the unusual weather patterns and the potential influence of climate change.

It's said that the cause was a "cut off" low pressure weather system that brought in warm, moist air, resulting in the heaviest rainfall recorded in the area.

Scientists also said that climate change is responsible for more intense and more frequent extreme storms, droughts, floods and wildfires around the world.

The torrential rainfall was driven by a large, slow-moving storm that traversed the Arabian Peninsula, and tracked into the Gulf of Oman over the course of multiple days.

This storm was able to take deep, plentiful tropical moisture located near the equator and unload it like a firehose over the region.

This type of rainfall can become more frequent as the atmosphere continues to warm, allowing it to soak up more moisture like a towel and to ring it out as flooding rainfall.

This event was described as a ‘once in a generation’ rainstorm and led to widespread flooding, including at Dubai’s international airport and on highways across the UAE.

Regardless, this incident has highlighted the challenges that even the most advanced cities face in the context of changing global weather patterns and has prompted a reevaluation of preparedness for such natural disasters.

UAE, a hereditarily ruled, autocratic nation on the Arabian Peninsula, typically sees little rainfall in its arid desert climate.

But the incident, which saw more than 142 millimeters (5.59 inches) of rainfall had soaked Dubai over 24 hours, far exceeded its average year of around 94.7 millimeters (3.73 inches) of rain.

The UAE's drainage systems quickly became overwhelmed.

This effectively crippled the city.

According to studies, Dubai's rapid growth over the past half century had made it vulnerable to flooding at far lower levels of rain than before.

It's worth noting that other areas of the country also saw increased rain, and that neighboring countries also saw increased precipitation.

In a message to the nation, Emirati leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi, said authorities would "quickly work on studying the condition of infrastructure throughout the UAE and to limit the damage caused."

According to the officials, the 24-hour rain total was the country’s largest since records there began in 1949.