That being said, the UAE recently received a little more rainfall than they planned. I returned to Dubai on the 15th of January from India to a very stormy, cloudy and bumpy landing at Dubai Airport. Usually, when you land in Dubai, its just clear skies (maybe some dust) and a very smooth landing, but not this time. I was actually excited because believe it or not, I missed the rain. I hadn't seen any rain since October (Oregon, where else).
Got out of the aircraft, went through immigration, collected my bags and saw that the airports roof was leaking water in several places! It was kind of ironic that such a modern airport had a problem that no one knew about until it started raining. Then came the roads, which were absolutely flooded. The drainage system completely failed and all the roads were water logged.
So how much rain did Dubai get? Remember Abu Dhabi and Dubai get an average annual rainfall of 43mm (1.7in) with the average for January being 17mm (0.6in). In the few days in January, Dubai had 105mm (4.15in) of rain!
The rains caused very heavy traffic everywhere and also resulted in over 800 accidents!
Here are some pictures from the Gulfnews website:
All the water drained away in about 4 days leaving behind a cleaner looking city. I guess there was some good use.
Of Course, it was a little bit of a downer to go from such modes of transportation to cattle class on a B777, which isn't all that bad, but still doesn't compare to sitting in the jump seat in the cockpit of a G4 during take off, or relaxing on the couch on the aircraft fully stretched out.
The Auto-Rickshaw - The Bane of any drivers existence 
The 'Non-Auto' Rickshaw
