It's Freakin' Hot!

Qatar is in the northern hemisphere almost directly on the Tropic of Cancer, and is a fairly small peninsula sticking out 160 km into the Gulf of Arabia, so it is mostly surrounded by the warm waters of the Gulf.

Qatar is a desert ... every bit of it. Were it not for man's intervention, I don't think there would be a single green plant here. Come to think of it, were it not for man's intervention, I don't think there would be a single white man here either.

Being a desert, it can get hot in the summer ... notice that the graph peaks at 45 degrees C during July and August. Now that's the average temperature, and to give you a comparison, Toronto's highest months are the same months when the temperature is 26 degrees C. I know in Ontario, when it gets to 30 degrees, we whine and complain about the heat and generally hide in air conditioned spaces. Just imagine that you are here where the temperature is 20 degrees hotter. Some smart asses will say stuff like ... 'yeah well it's humid here in Toronto unlike over there where it is a desert climate'. Wrong! Because the country is surrounded by very warm water, it gets very humid here as well.

Some days I have gone out to my car, which has a gauge to show the outside temperature, and it has surpassed 53 degrees C, and that doesn't include the effect of the humidity. It makes it difficult to drive when it's that hot because, despite using a reflective windscreen, the leather steering wheel and shifter are almost too hot to touch ... and be careful not to touch the seatbelt's metal parts to any exposed skin! There is a law here that should the temperature reach 50, then workers have to be sent home for the day ... never happens because the temperature never 'officially' gets to 50.

I've been here for 5 months now and have yet to see a single drop of rain. It has rained (twice) at night, and I know that because there were puddles on the ground the following morning.

What we do have here are dust storms. They usually happen just before a weather change like in the spring before it starts to get real hot. I was at lunch in the cafeteria with Rhonda one sunny, clear day, and when we came out from our 20 min break, the sky was brown, the humidity was very high and the finest dust you can imagine was heavy in the air. It gets into every pore of your body. Apparently, when these dust storms hit, the clinics and hospitals get very busy with people getting sick because of them.

Because of the extreme summer heat, most people get the hell out of Dodge for as much of it as possible, especially the westerners. Another reason they leave is to miss the month of Ramadan, but more on that in a separate post.

There is a winter here where the weather is cooler, but it's fairly short ... usually falling on a Tuesday.

To sum up the weather here ... it is freakin' HOT!