Some crazy weather here. The high temperature in Abu Dhabi today was 77 Fahrenheit, making it the lowest daily high since April.

A real bundle-up day.

But here is the shocker.

Rain. Quite a bit of it. The most in a day since 2006, some people said.

No one who has been here more than a month actually believes predictions of rain. They are made often and are nearly never right.

Abu Dhabi had zero appreciable rain for nearly two years until today.

And even as the day progressed, all the rain was away to the north. Dubai and the northern emirates. In Abu Dhabi (closer to the bone-dry Empty Quarter), just clouds. Though clouds themselves are reason for taking note, here in the UAE capital. That’s how rare they are.

Meantime, we were getting word of all sorts of trouble on highways, and reports of sports events cancelled or delayed, and the news desk did a story on it. Note the slide show accompanying the photo, and you can see weird, weird things: Water on the streets of Dubai.

The Dubai Sevens, one of the biggest sports and social events of the year (among Westerners, anyway) were drenched, and one of the local soccer league matches was delayed a half hour as groundskeepers attempted to get some of the standing water off the field.

Our reporter at the game, John McAuley, suggested that most of the rain seemed to have “collected solely on this saturated pitch.”

Even Abu Dhabi eventually got rain. Real rain. Enough to drive people off the patios of the three coffee shops on the sidewalk below our building. Enough to soak. About a half-hour of it. We stood on the  balcony and watched.

So. Shocking cold and rain from the skies. Very strange day here in our corner of the Gulf.