Where the weather weathers one.

Australia is in the news in a big way, and for the first time in ages, it's not because a sports star or politician has accidentally touched someone inappropriately with their hand or ill-advised wisdom. It's raining cats and dogs and cows and chooks. The entire state of Queensland is pretty much underwater - we're talking about a piece of land around 5 times the size of Japan or 3 1/2 times the size of California. Not only is it under water, it's under torrents. People are dying, animals perishing in thousands, houses are being swept off their foundations and arriving in towns 20km down the road 20 minutes later. It's a debacle, and it's facing tens of thousands of Australians with something that people of the developed world are not used to - genuine hardship. At the same time 130,000 people are displaced and 13 are dead due to floods in Sri Lanka, but it's only made a paragraph at the bottom of the page-spread on Oz in the local paper.

But in Dubai It hasn't rained since March 2010. It's tried a couple of times, fat angry clouds roll over the Burj Khalifa and sit there ominously for a few hours and then roll away, as if the place just isn't worth it. It's infuriating. The smell is what gets you - for just a little while it smells like our back yard in Melbourne in spring, and then like a rainy afternoon on our Samoan honeymoon, and then like Mothers' Day in drizzle between the vines in the Yarra Valley. And then it just smells like Dubai again. Dust, petrol, frangipanis and wet concrete.


When we first arrived in Dubai in 2008 it was April, about that time of year when everything is perfect. It's maximum 32 every day. It cools at night, just in time for sun-downers. The breezes come across the gulf with the scent of warm sea, and it's sunny. Every. Day. Hambone would arise each morning and part the curtains with unnecessary drama, stating proudly "beautiful day!" as if he were responsible for the clear skies and powerful rays, not just the job he cleverly nabbed. And for months he did this. Every. Day.

This is me on April 18 2008: ->

But even perfect starts to grate after a while...

May 18

June 1

June 27

And by the time we got to June 27, I looked like this


Why? Because Yahoo weather is a dirty filthy liar that is in cahoots with the middle eastern expat recruitment board. Because the real average daily maximum graph does not look as advertised on their website. I demonstrate below:

The true recorded Dubai Temperature

Temperature actually feels like

And if you take into account the humidity that hits in mid July, then it actually feels like the latest graph, so here is a picture of me on July 27:

I'm on a European holiday with the rest of the middle class of Dubai.

The temperature does drop a little in September, but the humidity rises to steamy shower level. The mugginess is so intense that even sound travels slower. And so although the western expat community has returned, they don't do so in spirit until October, when they finally edge their pasty vitamin D-deficient bodies outside, but only between the hours of 4pm and 9am.

Then we re-enter the perfection zone, where every day looks like the April 18 pic, until December, when it cools to 18 degrees overnight, and we all start praying for rain. Usually it comes by early January, over the space of one week, in spasmodic one-hour almighty bucketty bursts. Then, despite our anticipation of it's arrival over the last months, the entire city sweeps into insane panic.

There is no drainage system so to speak, so the water accumulates in football-field puddles, waiting for men in orange to bring their trucks and pump it out. Half the driving population press their 'stupid' buttons and Porches swimming solo down Sheikh Zayed Rd become a common sight, along with Toyota Yarises at peculiar angles in the right lanes and bewildered passengers with their sarees knee deep in the murk trying to push their husbands out. I need to learn how to say "I told you so!" in another 25 languages so I can join the conversations.

Children bring out their wellies and jump like possessed kangaroos in water we know has all kinds of bad things washed into it, but we don't stop them. We're all busy wearing deranged smiles and performing show tunes with our brollies in the middle of the roads.

But this year its raining everywhere else but here, so I can't imagine this post will invoke much sympathy in the international reader. Its 12:30pm, 26 degrees, the sky is cloudless and blue (again). But I'm ready for winter goddamn it! Although the pool is heated to thirty I can't make myself get in. The women of Dubai are wearing boots and velvet. The winter sales have started, and changing rooms have a set temp of 19 degrees to make us buy winter clothes. We're trying so hard, but the rain and the cold have been stolen from us.

Breaking news, Brazil is in even more trouble than Sri Lanka and Australia put together. El nino and La Nina be damned. If you want to help go here, or here, or here or google how to help. But don't help me, my life is paradise. Shutting up now...