Weather Surprise …

Sharjah's weather took an unexpected and extremely wild turn yesterday. In fact it was not only Sharjah but across UAE, but since I was in Sharjah staring out of the window at the strange weather, I can only vouch for that.

When we returned home from office in the evening, the weather wasn't much different. Some wind was blowing and it seemed that it might be a pleasant evening.

After an early dinner, while Nisha was cleaning up the vessels in the kitchen, she called out to me and told me that dust was coming in through the exhaust fan. I laughed at first saying that the exhaust fan blows outwards and dust goes out from it and not in. Nevertheless, I went to check and found that the exhaust fan was indeed blowing inwards. I thought something was wrong and its direction was reversed. I switched it off only to find it going in the opposite direction with greater speed.

At this time, we realized that there was a lot of sound / noise of wind blowing outside. The windows are usually closed and the dark film on the panes did not really give us a view of the outside where it was already dark evening. I realized that the wind outside was blowing so fast and furious that the exhaust fan had lost the battle with it and was actually turning in the opposite direction. Within minutes there was a layer of sand/dust on all surfaces of the kitchen, including the vessels my wife has just washed.

We checked out the view outside from the window in the living room and saw the Sand storm'ed weather outside. Lightning every few moments and heavy gusts of wind. After some time, rains also started but they were light. After about hanf an hour, things settled and we decided to step out.

We got ready and by the time we switched off the lights and opened the door to step outside, we heard the familiar sound of 'mumbai rains'. I refused to believe my ears. Have now spent more than 20 months in Dubai/Sharjah over the past 3 years and have never really seen the typical Mumbai kind of rains.

We checked out the window once again and we were greeted with a sight that was least expected. Torrential kind of rains, little bit of water flooding on the road, slowed down crawling traffic, heavy wind and some amount of sand still floating around. The lightning flashes were seen for quite some time.

It was the first time I saw such rains and weather here in Sharjah.