DOHA: The weather bureau has forecast scattered and thundery rains until this evening, accompanied by strong northwesterly winds from the colder European regions, triggering a sharp drop in day temperatures.
The mercury in Doha could drop to 22 degrees Celsius during the day (from 27 degrees yesterday) and to 20 degrees C at night (from 25 degrees last night).
Temperatures could dip to 17 and 22 degrees C in Al Khor, making it the coldest place today.
The bureau said the wind speed could be as high as between 18 and 25 knots, and up to 30 knots offshore.
Strong winds were expected to continue until the end of next week, forecasters said.
Light to heavy, thundery and intermittent rains are expected until this evening, forecasters added, refusing to say if heavy rains were expected in Doha as well or only in the northern areas.
“We can’t say that. The forecast is for all over the country,” a forecaster told this newspaper.
Meanwhile, nearly all parts of the country witnessed light to heavy intermittent rains throughout the day yesterday. It was raining rather heavily until the time of going to press at midnight.
Traffic was diverted from several major arterial roads and intersections as signals stopped working. At the main intersection near the Toyota Building on C Ring Road, for instance, police were diverting traffic at 11.30pm.
Some roundabouts, including the one in Old Salata area of the city, were submerged knee-deep in water with cars seen wading through.
Motorists had to face a similar situation in several other areas of the city and its sprawling suburbs, and the situation was worse in low-lying areas like Umm Ghuwailina and some areas in Old Airport, for instance.
Due to heavy and intermittent rains, especially late last evening, several residential areas were water-logged, with people facing difficulties in reaching their homes.
Those who were in their homes couldn’t come out to buy essentials. An expatriate woman motorist said she took almost 45 minutes to negotiate a short distance between the Mall roundabout and New Salata locality where she lived.
The rains led to water-logging inside the Villaggio Mall and the news with photographs went viral on local social networking sites.
Several shopkeepers in the mall and shoppers lodged complaints with the state consumer watchdog. Utility distributor Kahramaa said people facing outages or disruptions could call 991 for help.
A secondary Independent school in Dafna was evacuated by Civil Defence personnel early yesterday after a short-circuit led to outage. It rained quite heavily in Al Ruwais in the north yesterday with most roads submerged in keep-deep water.
Some people from the area posted photographs on their Twitter accounts that showed some youngsters using boats for revelry.
In Alzain Municipality area, authorities drained more than 115,000 gallons of water from water-logged roads and residential areas.
People said the rains belied claims of civic authorities about their preparedness to deal with water-logging in Doha and elsewhere. They said the rains were not flash and were actually being forecast for several days in advance, with civic authorities claiming that they were fully prepared to deal with the situation. These claims were eventually proven hollow, people said.
The Peninsula
