Violent rainstorms are nearly unknown in Abu Dhabi.

Violent duststorms? Sure. That happens a couple of dozen times a year. The wind blows, it picks up dirt from far away, and pretty soon the whole of the city is covered in grit.

But violent rainstorms? With heavy winds? Stuff being knocked down?

No. That doesn’t happen, in my experience — until early this morning.

Seems as if everyone in the city woke up at around 2:30 a.m. because of pouring rain and, especially, howling winds.

I believe my dreams began to incorporate the storm that blew through. Then it got so loud, it woke me.

The wind was moaning through the apartment, and I assumed I had left a window open a crack. Actually, no; it was blowing so hard that the wind had gotten into the air-conditioning ducts of the 20-story building and was huffing into the room.

Some of my colleagues were still awake when that happened. One said he looked out his 17th-floor window and could see “a white wall coming in fast.” Within a few minutes all the flag poles across the way from his building had been blown over.

Two others in a high floor of a fairly new set of towers on Reem Island, which is part of the capital, found themselves trying to push closed some windows that seemed about to come crashing inside the apartment.

When we woke the next day, the ground was wet, and a piece of red, plastic debris about 18 inches square had landed outside my window. It may have been part of a barbecue. It took some serious wind to get into a recessed area.

It was significantly worse elsewhere. The scaffolding outside a building being demolished collapsed, damaging 13 cars parked below. Trees went down. Cops fielded hundreds of calls.

Apparently, no one was seriously hurt, which is good, because it actually was a bit fun. Just to see nature acting up, in a wet and weird way, in this part of the world.