cyclone in Arab desert land !!

A desert is a landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions create unique biomes and ecosystems. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to denudation. About one-third of the land surface of the Earth is arid or semi-arid. This includes much of the polar regions, where little precipitation occurs, and which are sometimes called polar deserts or "cold deserts".  

The word meant  a bag made of palm leaves in the language of the Maldives. A cyclonic storm named as ‘Tropical Cyclone Gonu’ was indeed odd occurring   in the Gulf of Oman and made landfall in Iran, a nation not known for cyclones.  That was considered a thing of the past and a rare occurrence.

The Arab states of the Persian Gulf  refer  to a group of Arab states bordering the Persian Gulf. There are seven member states of the Arab League in the region: Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Yemen is bound to the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, based on history and culture.

The term has been used in different contexts to refer to a number of Arab states in the Gulf region. The prominent regional political union Gulf Cooperation Council includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. 

For those of us watching Vadivelu, Gulf country is Dubai and includes Apitabi. !! 

The Gulf has been severely impacted by heavy rain  in the Persian Gulf, causing flash flooding across the region. Several states recorded nearly a year's worth of rain in a single day. The floods had a significant impact across the region, with Oman and the United Arab Emirates being particularly affected,  resulting in the deaths of at least 24 people, including 19 in Oman.  Southeastern Iran, Yemen, and the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, as well as the Gulf states of Bahrain and Qatar, also experienced heavy rainfall and subsequent flooding.

The Persian Gulf region is known for its hot and dry weather, though heavy rains causing flooding have also occurred with greater regularity in recent years.  A  Senior forecaster  of the UAE’s National Centre of Meteorology (NCM) explained that "a low pressure system in the upper atmosphere, coupled with low pressure at the surface had acted like a pressure 'squeeze' on the air. That squeeze, intensified by the contrast between warmer temperatures at ground level and colder temperatures higher up, created the conditions for the powerful thunderstorm".  Meteorologists from the University of Reading stated that the heavy rain was caused by large thunderstorms.

In Oman, at least 19 people were killed due to the floods that  included 10 schoolchildren and their driver whose vehicle was washed away by flood waters in Samad al-Shan on 14 April 2024.  The UAE witnessed a record-breaking rainfall in a 24 hour period, surpassing Emirati meteorological data since records began in 1949.  

In the aftermath of the floods, some news outlets quoted specialist meteorologist Ahmed Habib linking the heavy downpours to the UAE's cloud seeding program. Due to the arid desert climate and high temperatures, cloud seeding has been used previously in the United Arab Emirates in order to combat water scarcity. Dismissing the allegations,   the deputy director-general of the UAE’s National Centre of Meteorology (NCM), said the institution “did not conduct any seeding operations during this event.  Scientists from the University of Reading, whose cloud seeding program is used by the UAE, denied that cloud seeding was to blame for the heavy rainfall, given that the large-scale weather pattern was predicted in advance and was too large to be influenced by cloud seeding. They added that the effects of cloud seeding are typically short-lived, lasting for a few hours.

Recalling Cyclone Gonu that  struck the Gulf in June 2007.  It was  an extremely powerful tropical cyclone that became the strongest cyclone on record in the Arabian Sea. The second named tropical cyclone of the 2007 North Indian Ocean cyclone season, Gonu developed from a persistent area of convection in the eastern Arabian Sea on June 1, 2007.  It  turned northward into the Gulf of Oman, and dissipated on June 7, after making landfall in southern Iran, the first landfall in the country since 1898.

Intense tropical cyclones like Gonu are extremely rare in the Arabian Sea, and most storms in this area tend to be small and dissipate quickly The cyclone caused 50 deaths and about $4.2 billion in damage (2007 USD) in Oman, where the cyclone was considered the nation's worst natural disaster.  

With regards – S Sampathkumar
19^th Apr 2024 

Featured here are damages of Gonu