Monsoon rain penetrates the busy highway, creating difficult conditions for the flow of jeeps. Suddenly waterfalls appear on the road.
This is common in some parts of Southeast Asia, but is actually the United Arab Emirates in the heat of summer, when temperatures regularly exceed 50 degrees.
To escape this heat, the UAE has developed a plan – to create artificial rain. According to the National Meteorological Center, after the sowing of clouds, the amount of precipitation increased.
On Sunday, the UAE National Meteorological Service released a video of heavy rains. Cloud seeding operations are part of its ongoing mission to produce precipitation in the Middle East, where the average rainfall is only 4 inches.
The rain was created using unmanned aerial vehicle technology, which releases electric charges into the clouds to collect and generate precipitation.
Heavy rains caused waterfalls in the city of Isle of Ain and made road conditions dangerous.
In an effort to cope with the country’s declining water mass, the UAE has invested $ 15 million in nine different rain projects. in 2017.
The current system, which is used to change the electric charge of clouds, is being developed by researchers at the University of Reading in England. Professor Martin Ambaum, who worked on the project, told the BBC in March that there were enough clouds in the UAE to create conditions conducive to rain.
The project tries to make the water droplets merge and stick together when receiving an electrical impulse. “When the drops merge and become large enough, they will fall like rain,” Professor Ambaum told the BBC.
Applying electric shocks to clouds is better because it does not require the use of chemicals.