2024 Dubai Rainstorm

Overview

The 2024 Dubai Rainstorm, also known as the 2024 UAE Flood or the 2024 Dubai Flood, refers to the heaviest recorded rainfall ever to hit the United Arab Emirates (UAE) desert nation, flooding portions of major highways and roads, delaying thousands of flights and causing chaos in Dubai. After the disaster occurred in mid-April 2024, many netizens began sharing memes and reactions about the unprecedented rainstorm on social media platforms like Twitter / X, TikTok and Reddit, among others. One of the most viral pieces of content about the flooding shows a cat being rescued while clinging to a submerged vehicle. Rumors have also spread on the internet that the rainstorm was caused by the UAE's "Cloud Seeding," which is a weather modification technique whereby small planes fly through clouds burning salt flares that can, theoretically, increase precipitation to help make it rain.

Background

On April 16th, 2024, several netizens and media outlets started to report that Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), was "submerged in floods as UAE gets over a year’s worth of rain in hours," as AlJazeera^[1] stated. X^[2] user @aviationbrk shared footage that day of the Dubai Airport flooded while airplanes were trying to take off (shown below), which amassed over 1 million views and 6,600 likes in two days.

Developments

UAE Cloud Seeding Rumors

Rumors alleging the rainstorm was caused by the Government's Cloud Seeding project were popularized as Dubai flood videos went viral on social media. For instance, on April 16th, 2024, X^[3] user @BGatesIsaPyscho posted a video from CNBC explaining how the UAE Cloud Seeding system works, which amassed more than 3 million views and 20,000 likes in two days.

According to SKY News,^[4] the UAE has denied cloud seeding as the cause of the record rainfall. The video, uploaded on YouTube^[4] on April 18th, 2024, amassed more than 13,000 views and 135 likes in a few hours (shown below).

Dubai Cat Rescue

On April 17th, 2024, a video of a cat being rescued while clinging to a car door amid Dubai's flooding has gone viral on the internet. The Indepedent^[5] shared the video on YouTube (shown below), amassing roughly 9,000 views and 242 likes in a day.

Online Reactions

People took to social media to post memes and jokes about Dubai's flooding hours after the event. For instance, on April 16th, 2024, X^[6] user @ordinarytings replied to a video showing water falling from inside a hotel in Dubai, saying "Dubai infrastructure being totally unprepared for moderate rain, worsened by the government’s cloud-seeding experiments, coinciding with a massive crypto convention so all the coin-fluencers are there to document it." The post (shown below) amassed 3 million views and 75,000 likes in two days.

On April 17th, X^[7] user @_melayela_ posted an edited video of X-Men '97 Storm character causing a tornado and storm in Dubai (shown below), which received more than 93,000 views and 3,700 likes in a day.

Redditors also shared videos about the Dubai flood, like Redditor @saksit13429^[8] post on April 16th, 2024, showing a flooded highway filled with cars (shown below), which amassed more than 10,000 upvotes and 1,000 comments in two days

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References