Arabian Tales - It's a Dry Heat...

It looks like smoke and you could be forgiven for thinking it’s mist, especially with the wet grass under your feet as you walk through the park, seemingly with early morning dew, but your itching eyes and the thin film of dust covering everything gives it away. It’s a sandstorm, driven by the hot wind off the desert; the sand so fine you cannot see the individual grains. And the dew: that’s just the daily soaking from the sprinkler system.

I came to UAE thinking the weather was just about temperature – warm in winter, hot, very hot, in summer and that the sky was always blue. And there’s truth in that, but the wind is always a factor and the fine dust is always present. You could clean your kitchen countertop three times a day but the film of dust returns pretty quickly. The wind is so strong sometimes that the sandstorm brings a desert equivalent of a whiteout – you can barely see the car in front of you. And the strong wind brings elevated temperatures, along with the dust; it sucks the humidity out of the air. No Chinooks here, this is the Shamal…

But when the sky is clear, it’s dazzling; sunlight glinting off the sand, sea and imaginative buildings – in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. At night the biblical moon and stars seem extra crisp. The length of the day between seasons is more even (December sunrise 7am; sunset 5:30pm/ June sunrise 7:30am; sunset 7pm) and we’re closer to the equator so the sun is almost overhead all year round so, once again, as when we moved to Australia, I seem to have lost my sense of direction.

Burj Khalifa, Dubai
World's Tallest Building

Now that summer is upon us it’s the variation in humidity that is most apparent. I find I cannot guess the temperature. Every morning I go for a walk before my shower and you are generally walking out into a furnace, even at 6:30am. But similar to cold temperatures and humidity, it can feel the same at 30°C with 80% humidity as it does at 40°C with 40% humidity. But at 40°C with 80% humidity, I walk alright - straight back into the house…

Viceroy Hotel @ Yas Island F1 Track

The humidity is up and down but often hits 85% - and with the temperature in the house at 25C (thank you air conditioning!), it’s the outside of the windows that are running with water (from condensation).

And it’s hot, very hot (going above 45C most days now)! How hot?

  So hot some claim their shower has become unbearable; they turn the hot water heater off in order to use the hot water, from its insulated tank inside their air-conditioned house, as cold water. That way they can use the 'cold' water, piped in directly from outside, as hot. I haven’t gone that far but my cold water is so warm I’ve stopped

The Smartie!

drinking or even rinsing my mouth with it – I only consume water from the water cooler.

  So hot that when you flush the toilet, even in the mall, a wave of hot steam hits you where you least expect it.

  How come you guys don’t have a tan, you say? Well, it’s so hot you don’t go out in the sun for more than a few minutes at a time; stay longer and you feel your skin will crisp up and peel right off. So, nobody gets a tan here – we’re all the same shade as we were when we arrived.

I have a tan now, but I got it on my visit to Toronto in early August – it felt so cool walking along in the sun that I got sunburned in the first two days!