These people answered “yes” to the question if they believed that heavy rains would fall in Jeddah this year and might cause a third natural disaster.
In the survey, published on a website on Monday, only 107 residents said they did not expect a repetition of the crisis, while 167 said they had no rain phobia. A number of websites published reports quoting unidentified US sources during the past 48 hours that said heavy rains would be falling on the western regions of Saudi Arabia later this month.
Many residents started browsing weather forecast sites to obtain news about rains in Jeddah, especially since rains usually fall during the winter season, between November and January. They were particularly keen to know what the Russian observatory was saying, because it had predicted the heavy rains during January 2011 in Jeddah.
The concern about rains is also shared by the government departments. Makkah Governorate has been after the companies entrusted to build rain drainage systems, particularly in east Jeddah, to finish the job as quickly as possible.
Mansour Al-Mazrouie, a professor of climatology at King Abdulaziz University, expected rains to fall in Jeddah during the coming three months, especially in the second half of November. He, however, said the levels of rain would be normal and might not cause any disaster. “There are no indications that a rain crisis would happen this year,” he assured.
