Catastrophic Flood In The Desert: Oman

The desert monarchy of Oman, on the Arabian Peninsula, was hit by an enormous flash flood this week.

Flooding and debris in the Middle Eastern
Monarchy of Oman this week.  

Which led to some pretty dramatic videos, which you can see at the bottom of this post.

Which of course is strange, being in the desert and all. It's at least the second major flood to hit the monarchy in the past year,  so things are goofy there lately in the weather department.

This time of year is the quote, unquote rainy season in Oman, and the precipitation usually comes in the form of often torrential downpours.

So flash flooding is always a risk, especially around Muscat, the capital of Oman.

Destructive flash floods also hit Oman in 2011 and 2013.

The Times of Oman reports this time, government officials were upset that people did not heed warnings that the heavy rain was approaching. That meant many people were trapped out on highways when the flash floods hit. They had to be rescued from their cars.

In the first of two videos below, you see two men try to get out of a flooded vehicle and start making their way across a jumble of cars and vans that had been washed into each other. The video ends before we find out if they made it to safety, but I haven't heard of any deaths in this round of flooding.

The Oman flooding last March killed at least six people.

The second video, from the Times of Oman, gives us the flood scenes around Muscat. Pretty scary stuff.

Here are the videos:



The gentle music in the background of this second video is a bit disconcerting, given the disaster unfolding on screen: