In the big steamer

6:35am on a Sunday morning and I leave my apartment to drive to work. As I come out of the lift downstairs, I can already sense it: the humidity. I turn the corner in the hall and I can see our front doors are covered in thick steamy mist while a million tears of condensation slowly pave their way down to join the considerable pool of water on the floor.

Outside, it is pretty much like walking into a giant sauna or Turkish steam bath, or as if the whole world has become one big greenhouse. RIGHT NOW would be an appropriate time to stop global warming, please, AND reverse it quickly! Do something about it! It´s only early morning, but my phone tells me that it is currently 36C. I guess late summer weather is back then. It is like this every year. We tend to have really high temperatures from mid June through July, typically between 40 and 50 degrees. Then around 1st of August, the temperature drops a few degrees leaving room for the vicious humidity to crawl to the top of the hygrometer scale. On the radio, they mention it is up to 70% this morning. It´s like being stuck in a big steamer for weeks. You can literally feel your bodily fluids rapidly evaporate drop by drop. It's not pleasant and it sucks! It is usually bad in the late afternoon, horrible in the morning and outright unbearable the first two hours after sunset.

I make a stop at the petrol station on way to work to buy a sandwich and some fruit for my lunch. The guys working the pumps are suffering already. I see them looking miserable and tight, constantly trying to wipe the sweat from off their foreheads and faces. As they struggle to serve a long morning queue of cars in need of petrol; an army of always thirsty 4x4s with enormous tanks and impatient drivers in their usual bad morning mood. They make frequent use of their horns when they think the guys working the pumps are too slow finding change for the driver in front or making a receipt. Not that any of them would ever even think of getting out of the cars to fill them up themselves. The petrol companies have tried on several occasions to make certain petrol stations self-service, but so far without success. Despite the fact that the drivers can wait inside their air-conditioned cars while the guys are stuck outside in their misery, and in spite of the fact that petrol here costs but a fraction of the price you pay in most countries outside the emirates, they are still not happy with the service. One of the ways many people here are terribly arrogant.

I walk through the sliding door to the shop at the petrol station which is also covered with condensation. Late summer is here again. It looks like this will be a hot and hazy day.

The very humid weather conditions on top of the high temperatures is something you need to take seriously and you need to adjust your habits and behaviour to the conditions. The humid weather types drain your body for liquid, so it is essential to drink loads of water. Also your mineral balance is affected. It may take your body up to 2-3 weeks to adjust properly to the changes which this time of the year will inevitably bring to the weather. Last week, a man died from a heatstroke in neighbouring Emirate of Sharjah. Every year we have deaths here directly related to the hot, humid summer.

We are facing 8-9 weeks of this unbearably humid type of weather. Same song as last year. Same song as every year. It will be way past Ramadan before the humidity gradually drops again. It will be late September or early October before it starts getting better. But once it is over, we will have another 5-6 months where the weather will be gorgeous in Dubai and in the rest of the UAE. Let´s get it over with. Summer: bring on the humidity. We will outlast you. We will survive you. Get it over and done with and then please go away so we can have the good times back doing outdoors activities again for half a year.

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