Flooding in the Kingdom

It has been a rainy rainy couple of days in Riyadh. The weather has been downright wonky for the past month. So, in addition to sandstorms, this country also offers the traditional form of weather havoc, and that's heavy rain. It was nothing short of surprising for me to be in an SUV, being driven through water a foot high on dips in the road. There's not a lot of grass & soil around these parts to help soak up some of that water, and certainly no drainage systems like what we have in Toronto that collect it during rains like these. As a result, a downpour like the one we saw today turns traffic into a slow moving sort of chaos. Like chaos is wading through water. For anyone who thinks that SUV's are a big waste of everything, this is one situation where you don't want to be that sucker driving a sedan.