Day 199 - It Never Rains. . .

Image by katerha, via Flickr.com

The skies in Doha are always blue. There are never any clouds in the sky. Or at least that is the way it looked for many months. October, November, December, and January came and went without a cloud to be seen or a drop of rain to feel. The humidity - and there was humidity - apparently all came from The Gulf.

But in February, there were four days of rain. The rain was so strong that it seemed to go through the walls, or at least through the gaps between the doors and the door jambs and through the planks the doors were constructed from. For four days it rained. There were no runoff drains in the streets, so many of them filled, making it impossible to travel the normal routes from home to work, or at least impossible to travel at the same speed.

There was so much water on the roads that the government sent out trucks to vacuum it up and then emptied it into parking lots around the city that had first been built up around the edges with temporary walls to contain the water, a little like the sandbagging done on the Red River in the spring to protect homes from flooding, but in reverse. The water remained in those artificial ponds for many weeks, long enough that when Gloria, the ambassador's new secretary, arrived in February, she mentioned how surprised she was to find lakes in town. I told her to wait for a few days - they would soon be gone.

Sand yacht races in Qatar, with temporary lake in background

The water stayed around outside of Doha for a few weeks, too. Within days, plants popped up along the edges of these temporary lakes, adding color to the desert scenery. One Gulf Sunday I went with friends, Pete and Zofia, to watch sand yacht races. Qatar was the only place where sand yachts were raced on the highway instead of on the beach. We were able to park by the side of the road and watch all the yachts as they raced by. The water in the background at the side of the road almost made us forget we were in the middle east.

Those four days of rain were the only days of rain during my two years in Doha.