The weather in Qatar in summer is hot. I mean HOT, as in frizzy hair, continual perspiration and spectacles that mist up the moment you step outside.

Yes, sweltering, as working hours are officially changed, heat-related illnesses soar and all life form retreats or runs away.

Birds pant, plants wilt and the cold tap dispenses hot water from 8am. And umbrellas are never used for rain.

It is 45 degrees Celsius-plus hot.

Open-the-oven-door hot.

Just too darn hot.

HOT!

Only recently I had to flee the poolside at 7am because my mobile phone warned me that it was overheating! Apps are shutting down, it bleated. This was a first for me.

Temperature torture

Right now, it’s August, which is the hottest month of the year, after July. Temperatures range from 32C to 41C, but actually it feels warmer and often is with the mercury rising close to 50C in Qatar.

The weather is among the many weird and wonderful things about living here.

This week nearby Bahrain recorded unprecedented electricity consumption, thanks to reliance on energy-intensive air-conditioning systems and Iran declared a two-day public holiday for government and bank workers this week to “protect public health”.

It’s temperature torture for those of us unaccustomed to such heat. 

 

But this is a desert, after all. And, since Qatar is such a small, flat country, and less than 3000 kilometres north of the equator, I have to accept this is my new norm.

There is little difference in the temperature throughout the country (remember, it is no bigger than Greater London), though it is generally slightly cooler at the coast. In real terms, that’s 47C inland and 45C alongside the waters of the Gulf.

It is cooler come winter of course, with temperatures ranging from 14C to 25C. And, for me, and the other 3 million peeps living here, that’s just peachy.

Hot stories

Visually, such heat to hard to capture, though I have tried, so here’s a torrid temperature tale from a pal to try to illustrate just how hot, hot is in Qatar.

“It was like having the air sucked from my lungs on one of those blistering hot days on the Highveld.

“I nearly didn’t make it to work on my second day as the humidity was so high my glasses steamed up and I walked into a wall.”

And, if that wasn’t humiliating enough, on Richard’s return walk home, he went in search of an internet café (yes, this is back in the day, when Internet was still a new and evolving thing).

“As I walked down Al Mirqab Street I went into every other shop for the air conditioning to try to cool down. By the time, I walked into the internet café, I was so drenched in sweat, the receptionist ran outside to see if it was raining.”

I look forward to hearing other such sizzling stories, but not those that has seen travellers lose their way and ultimately their lives while in the desert in the Middle East.

Mass exodus

This excess heat and the purposely timed holidays (from late June to mid-August for schools) means that those who can escape the country do so en masse.

The human lemming run sees thousands upon thousands of migrant workers gather at Hamad International Airport to board planes and head for their home countries.

If in 2019, for example, 300 000 ex-pats temporarily left the country during the summer break, imagine how many more are repeating the ritual five years on.

Certainly, the roads, shops and public spaces are far emptier than usual.

Our compound, or Lego Land as I call it, is a ghost town with the majority of residents still away.

We too were part of the exodus, briefly swopping the 40C-plus temps for a wet and cold South African winter. 

Seasons

There’s a real sense of the seasons in South Africa, especially in places like Cape Town with its Autumn leaves for example, but little, bar the temperature, to differentiate the time of the year in Qatar.

I well remember how every day looked like every other when we first lived in our “rectory in the sky” on the 26^th floor of a downtown skyscraper. The sky was always blue and cloudless.

Now that I have lived in Qatar for 18 months, I appreciate that there is much more to the weather.

There are two main seasons – the cooler December to February, and the very hot period from May to mid-October.

March and November are the in-between months and my favourite because they are warm months without being scalding hot. (So, if you are thinking of visiting Qatar or anywhere else in the Middle East, you might want to consider March and November. It’s when many of the international sporting events take place.)

Humidity

I also know some days during Summer the humidity makes life outdoors even more unbearable. Humidity, that’s the amount of water vapour in the air, regularly reaches 60% on bad days. It sucks your energy and can cause heat stroke.

Hence the need for enforced working restrictions which in Qatar means outdoor working is banned from 10am to 3.30pm from 1 June to 15 September.

This means many work at night instead, as we learnt while still living in the skyscraper with the construction vehicles busy all throughout the small hours. The municipal gardeners in our neighbourhood only come on duty at 6pm when we’re braving the outdoors for a walk, and the Talabat Tribe (the delivery guys) move from their bikes to cars to deliver goods.

The humidity also makes it feel hotter than it actually is.

Not to mention frizzy hair, perspiration and glasses that are forever steamed up.

And so, we live indoors.

AC

AC or air-conditioning is still my best friend. I wouldn’t be without him, but sometimes AC is also a thermostat nightmare all on his own. Well, that’s our experience. This means I still get to wear long-sleeved clothing at the height of summer since it can get very chilly indoors.

Office aerobics is the norm as I am forever up and down in our apartment – turning the AC on or off or trying to regulate the temperature.

Elsewhere I have no such control, so a cardigan is a must-have item when trawling the malls or other indoor public spaces.

AC is a rare privilege in South Africa, but in the Middle East it is a must. We would not exist without it (though certainly the original Bedouin and fishermen managed without all these modern conveniences).

This convenience now extends beyond homes, offices and shops, to outdoor parks, stadiums and even farming facilities, aka the green pastures created for the country’s 24 000 dairy cows. I kid you not.

It’s the AC that lulls us into thinking it’s perfectly lovely outside.

It isn’t. It’s hot.  

Wind

Sometimes it is windy too.

Coming from Port Elizabeth means we are accustomed to the wind. But wind with dust and sand is something else altogether.

While the summers are long, sweltering, arid, sometimes cloudy and humid, the winters are mainly clear, dry and sometimes windy.

Most of the wind comes from the North and is called the Shamal wind. This wind makes everything quite hazy so that your normally clear views are dulled by the dust and sand the wind has picked up.

We have sand storms, but they do not happen too often – as in twice in 18 months.

One never-to-be forgotten overnight desert trip on 1 April (the timing was not lost on us), left us in no doubt as to the impact of the Shamal wind.   

Dust

Dust is one of the tell-tale signs of the wind living in a desert. It is everywhere.

Everyone who escaped the heat returns to a dusty welcome with homes closed for a week or five laden with large deposits of the finest dust.

You might not be able to see these particles filling the airwaves with the naked eye, but it’s there.

In fact, Qatar is considered “unhealthy for sensitive groups” according to the Swiss IQAir monitoring authority.

The concentration or pollution in Qatar is 8.5 times the World Health Organisation’s annual air quality guideline value.

Many outdoor workers wear masks for this reason.

Rain

And then there’s the rain.

Yes, it does rain here, but it took more than a year for me to personally experience rain.

We are in the dry season now, so rain is highly unlikely.

Officially, Qatar receives less than 100mm annually, with the most rain falling in December, January and February.

When it does rain it is national news and more so because of flooding.

This is often not because of the amount of rain, but because of poor drainage capacity.

Let’s just say we are grateful that the rain that fell in December and January did not fall during the FIFA 2022 World Cup in November 2022 because doubtless many games would have been disrupted.

During these downpours, roads were flooded, the roofs of public facilities leaked or caved in, and Metro stations were still dotted with buckets weeks later.