Record high temperature in Saudi Arabia
Hot
rain falls on Saudi Arabia: highest temperature and humidity combo
ever recorded in a rainfall
The
Extinction Protocol,
13
June, 2012
June
7, 2012
– SAUDI
ARABIA
-
Pilgrims
to the holy city of Mekkah (Mecca), Saudi Arabia must have been
astonished on Tuesday afternoon, when the weather transformed from
widespread dust with a temperature of 113°F (45°C) to a
thunderstorm with rain.
Remarkably, the air temperature during the
thunderstorm was a sizzling 109°F (43°C), and the relative humidity
a scant 18%. It is exceedingly rare to get rain when the temperature
rises above 100°F, since those kind of temperatures usually require
a high pressure system with sinking air that discourages rainfall.
However, on June 4, a sea breeze formed along the shores of the Red
Sea, and pushed inland 45 miles (71 km) to Mekkah by mid-afternoon.
Moist air flowing eastwards from the Red Sea hit the boundary of the
sea breeze and was forced upwards, creating rain-bearing
thunderstorms.
According to weather records researcher Maximiliano
Herrera, this is the highest known temperature that rain has fallen
at, anywhere in the world. He knows of one other case where rain
occurred at 109°F (43°C): in Marrakech, Morocco on July 10, 2010.
A
thunderstorm that began at 5 pm local time brought rain at a
remarkably low humidity of 14%, cooling the temperature down to 91°F
within an hour.
Thunderstorms often produce big drops of cold rain,
since these raindrops form several thousand meters high in the
atmosphere, where temperatures are much cooler than near the surface.
Some drops even get their start as snow or ice particles, which melt
on the way to the surface. Additional cooling of the drops occurs due
to evaporation on the way down.
However, in the case of the June 4,
2012 Mekkah storm, I think the rain was probably more like a hot
shower.
Thus, the thunderstorms’ raindrops would have been
subjected to 100 seconds of some very hot air on the way to the
surface, likely warming them above 100°F by the time they hit the
ground.
With the air temperature a sizzling 109°F (43°C) at the
time of the June 4 thunderstorm in Mekkah, the raindrops could easily
have been heated to a temperature of over 105°F (41°C) by the time
they reached the surface!
On Saturday, June 2, the temperature in
Mekkah hit 51.4°C (124.5°F), a new record for the city, and just
1.1°F (0.6°C) below the all-time hottest temperature record for
Saudi Arabia (125.6°F, or 52°C, recorded at Jeddah on June 22,
2010.)
I expect that 20 – 40 years from now, we’ll begin seeing
occasional cases where rain falls at a temperature above 117°F
(47°C) in the desert regions of North Africa and the Middle East.
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