FINALLY the RAIN comes back to Saudi Arabia!

Monday 14th December 2009
Well it has finally come to an end.

No no – nothing as dramatic as you are thinking. And nothing directly affecting me.

What I am talking about is something that many of you out there are being inundated with right now. And that is RAIN!

Now, I'm sure you all are wishing hard that you could send you rain clouds to me and that I, in return, will give you back some blue skies and sunshine. Well, I'd love to of course though I haven't yet achieved God status.

But the first part of that deal HAS been done it seems. On the night of 5th to 6th December 2009, and for the first time in nearly EIGHT MONTHS (since about mid-April), the rain came to Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia.

YES!! RAIN!! REAL RAIN fell in the night!!

You can imagine the feeling when I left the apartment block building here. I stepped outside and there it was EVERYWHERE. Well, I mean that the roads and pavement areas were WET. And there were drops of rain coming from the sky too.

Doesn't sound much, does it? But here it's a Great Event. When rain falls here, the Saudis want to go outside. They want to see it, to smell it. And they REALLY like it! Why? Well, a few years ago I had some Saudi students when I was working in Bournemouth in England. I asked them what they liked about England. “The rain”, they replied. This really took me back – you ask any other nationality and they will say how much they hate the rain and how it does nothing BUT rain in England. So I asked them why they liked this. “Well,” they said, “it rains so little in our country and it is so dry. Rain is something different and something nice to see”.

So there you are. Don't tell me that everyone and everywhere the instance of rain is treated like …. well, like something you might scrape off your shoe!

However, there is another change here. Now, for ME it is AGAIN a very welcome change. For me, we have, at LAST, some normal weather to get us through the day. A bit of sun, some rain, cool mornings and sunny and warm afternoons and then cooler evenings. The kind of weather I am used to and the kind I like. That is compared to HERE where it is just sunny and hot from dawn to dusk.

This is now the period they call, “winter”. What do YOU think of when winter comes to mind? Depends where you are of course, but you will probably say things like Lots Of Rain, Cold Winds, Snow And Ice, Woolly Hat Time, Ski Weather etc. etc. and you would be right where YOU are. Not here. The winter season here means that nights can drop to, at times, between zero celsius (very rarely) and 10 celsius. In the mornings when I'm up and out for lessons (about 7am), the temperature is, I suppose, around 10 celsius or maybe a little below. In the middle of the day the temperature is up to about 20 celsius. The rain comes in the night mostly, and it leaves many roads with huge puddles of water where drainage is poor or non-existent. I have seen pictures of underpasses on main roads which are COMPLETELY FLOODED OUT. And water on main roads often has nowhere to go, though the problem there is mainly with smaller side roads. But going into town last week the taxi had to slow down to a crawl where it had to go through a part of the road at the side where the water had not drained away and where it came up to half-tyres height.

Nice to see that they here also have trouble in their own “extreme weather” situations! Come back UK town councils – all is forgiven!!

Well I can tell you that this rain continued all through the week raining every day a little. At nights there were always thunderstorms far away and you could see lightning flashes in the distance. But I didn't hear any thunder at night – not here anyway.

Well, to the Saudis this is cold weather as I said. Now you see them going round in sweaters or jackets and some of them even have those woolly hats! YES! The kind you wear when you go out in the snow or on those cold mornings where YOU live. And yet it is only about 10 celsius! Do YOU wear a woolly hat at such a temperature? I very much doubt it!

I am enjoying it a lot. For me it is “payback time” for all those unbearable days in the summer where I suffered under that impossible sun and where it was normal for them. And partly just for fun (but also because the air in the classroom is stale in the mornings when I get there), I STILL insist on putting on the air conditioning system. But I do turn the temperature up a little ….. just a little.

But …. it is NOT what you would call COLD here!! Not by ANY stretch of the imagination!