I love rain. Spending four years in Abu Dhabi seems to do that to you. The same way that it makes you appreciate public transport and summer weather below 40 degrees Celcius.

After all, it is a city built in a desert. There is no storm sewer anywhere; there was no need for it. In a suburban sprawl with sparse roads and 20-lane highways, the absence of a drainage system is not something you think about a lot. In Abu Dhabi, the annual rainfall is 42 mm. The annual rainfall in Singapore, a tropical city-state, is about 60 times higher.

The UAE government has been pursuing cloud seeding as a technological solution to increasing water demand and a hotter climate. Although the effectiveness of cloud seeding is debated and the costs and risks are equally high, the price of water security is high enough that the government still seems to pursue it for future-proofing. But the hard part in the UAE is not the financial cost or the risk; it is the rare chance of clouds gathering, which is a prerequisite for cloud seeding.

Given its rarity, rain in the desert is quite a sight when it happens. And when it rains it pours. I remember there was one week in March 2016 when streets and barren deserts were flooded with non-stop downpours and a lack of drainage. Heavy wind (also rare) made building structures fall off, causing electricity outages and road destruction. I have no idea if this was due to a successful yet uncontrollable cloud seeding attempt. But to see a flooded desert was really a bizarre sight straight out of Inception.

This flood might have been a statistical outlier, but it is a scientific fact that these unpredictable weather events, especially those with extremely destructive consequences, are becoming more common with the Climate Crisis. And if preventing the climate disasters is already too late, then the focus needs to be on how we can build climate-resilient cities. As you can imagine, tearing the entire streets of Abu Dhabi to build a stormwater sewer is probably not an overnight project, despite the resource privilege that the country enjoys. So then, how can countries better prepare for unforeseen climate disasters that can strike cities at any time without warning? If we know it will rain, we don’t have to let it pour.