No schools today owing to heavy rain

Most schools on Saturday announced they would be closed on Sunday due to the fluctuating weather conditions and their inability to receive students and teachers on the first day of the second semester, which was scheduled to start on Sunday at all UAE government and private schools that follow the Ministry of Education’s curriculum.

The Ministry of Education told the management of schools all over the UAE it would be up to them to decide to suspend study and dismiss students and technical, administrative and teaching staff in case of bad weather conditions as a precautionary measure aimed at maintaining the safety of students and the staff.

The emirate of Dubai witnessed occurrence of 1,880 road accidents, including 55 serious during the past two days due to the heavy rain, according to the Dubai Police.

The Command and Control Centre at the General Operations Department received around 51,000 calls via (999) from 12:00pm on Thursday until 3:30 pm the next day, while the call center received 5,562 calls on the 901 phone.

In the meantime, the Sharjah Police called on drivers to be cautious when driving slowly in the streets and sites affected by the heavy rain that witnessed by all regions of the emirate from Thursday and are expected to continue until today, according to weather forecasts.

Sharjah Police alerted drivers to the presence of rainwater pools on some external roads, and that temporary measures have been taken to close some of them and divert traffic to alternative routes.

The local crisis and disaster management team at Sharjah Police confirmed its readiness to deal with all emergencies and reports received by it on 999 and 901 that are allocated to inquiries and regular communications on any developments or cases that require intervention.

Rains of different intensity continued falling on different areas of the country on Saturday early morning, due to unstable weather conditions.

This is because of an upper air trough from the west, accompanied by a cold air mass with a surface trough from the Red Sea, associated with rainfall of different intensity with intervals over scattered areas of the country, said the National Centre of Meteorology (NCM).

Heavy rain began falling in Ruwais, Al Marfa, Tarif and Ghayathi areas in Al Dhafra, while heavy rain lashed Al Shawamekh in Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, and Ras Al Khaimah leasing to surface run-off in a number of valleys. Accordingly, the NCM called on the public to stay away from the valleys and the places that are flooded with rainwater, and to adhere to traffic safety instructions and guidelines.

For their part, the Abu Dhabi Police activated the 80 km/h-speed-system on all external roads of the emirate of Abu Dhabi, due to bad weather fluctuations, for a period of 4 hours and 40 minutes, starting from 9:20 am until 2:00 pm.