JEDDAH, 26 November 2003 — For the second day running, rain and thunder lashed the city, clearing the streets of traffic and effectively shutting down Eid activities along the Corniche.
A huge electrical storm, generating spectacular displays of fork lightning over the city, was accompanied by peals of thunder yesterday, the first day of Eid.
At a hotel on the north Corniche, where crowds gathered for the first daylight breakfast in a month, the outdoor buffet felt the force of the northwest wind which sent the carefully arranged sunshades and screens between seating areas flying. Families stoically braved the first spattering of rain, but conceded defeat as the clouds opened, sending staff scurrying to save the feast and guests racing for cover.
Though not as intense as the rains that caused the flash floods in the city a week ago, the roads were flooded in places, but what traffic there was moved easily.
The rain brought ingrained oil in the road to the surface, forming lethal patches of white emulsion, adding an unusual road hazard to the already hazardous conditions. On the Makkah Road north of Jeddah, several cars had careened off the road and lodged in the sand traps. Reassuringly, the vast majority of drivers Arab News observed were keeping their speed well within the legal limit.
Others had been brought to a halt by electrical failure from water entering the engine compartment. Police were quickly on the scene and seemed oblivious to the weather in their attempts to assist stranded motorists, many of whom were on their way out of Jeddah to visit family and relatives for the holiday.
The byways of Jeddah in the residential districts of Al-Rawdah and Al-Hamra were deserted. The street population of scavengers and cleaners had completely disappeared. Even the ubiquitous cats, so much a feature of street corners and alleys in the city, had hidden away.
Not quite everybody had stopped work, however. Ignoring the rain utterly, one dutiful street gardener was phlegmatically watering the median strip along the Corniche. Completely soaked through, with the occasional car adding more water to his already sodden coverall, he patiently directed his hose at the plants.
“It’s no bad thing to get a bit of weather rather than just climate,” said one Edinburgh Scot, a long-term resident in Jeddah, eyeing the downpour. “It’s just a shame that it comes when people are trying to celebrate outdoors. The weather’s perfect, the timing is dreadful.”
The car cleaning teams, so active outside many of the shopping malls, were looking forward to a good evening’s work.
“We’ll be busy tonight if the rain stops,” said Sami, an ebullient Nigerian who oversees an informal team of car-washers at a mall off Madinah Road. “Wet and dry, that’s what we like. Clean the same cars everyday: No problem!”
“And I thought Saudi Arabia was a desert,” one of two business travelers from western Australia who arrived at King Abdul Aziz International Airport on their first visit to the Kingdom remarked. They had arrived during the height of the downpour and were less cheerful. Soaked during their transit from the aircraft, they said that sympathetic officials helped accelerate their arrival formalities with a “sunny smile.”
