UAE Weather

Hourly Forecast: The Next 24 Hours

This is the day in front of you, hour by hour, for Dubai. Temperatures in the UAE follow a reliable rhythm: the coolest hour is just before sunrise, the climb is steepest between 9 and 11 in the morning, the peak lands between 2 and 4 in the afternoon, and the evening stays warm long after sunset, especially on the coast where the sea keeps the air humid.

The rain percentage under each hour is the chance of any rain falling in that hour. On most days of the year it sits at zero across the whole strip. When it climbs above about 30% in the winter months, that is the day to keep an umbrella in the car and to expect the roads to run slower than usual.

10-Day UAE Weather Forecast

Ten days is about as far ahead as a UAE forecast stays honest. Beyond that, treat any single number as a rough direction rather than a promise: the models agree well on sunshine, which covers most of the year, and less well on the exact day a winter rain system arrives.

One pattern to read in this table: when the wind turns to come off the sea from the north-west for several days in winter, cooler air and the year’s best weather usually follow. When a humid south-easterly sets in during summer, the temperature number may dip slightly while the day actually feels worse, because humidity does the damage, not the degrees.

UAE Weather Tomorrow

Tomorrow in Dubai: the forecast is summarised in the gold panel at the top of this page and in the second row of the 10-day table above, with the full hour-by-hour strip one section up. In practice, tomorrow in the Emirates almost always resembles today, shifted by a degree or two. The exceptions cluster in two seasons: the winter rain window from November to March, when a system can arrive or clear within a day, and the fog season of December and January, when a still, clear night can produce a near-zero-visibility morning with almost no warning the evening before.

If you are planning something outdoors tomorrow, the most useful single number is not the high but the combination of the high and the humidity, the feels-like temperature in the live panel. A 34°C day at 30% humidity is a pleasant beach day; the same 34°C at 75% humidity is a day to plan around air conditioning.

Weather in All Emirates Today

The UAE is small, but its weather is not one thing. The Gulf coast cities share one climate, Fujairah faces a different sea, Al Ain sits inland in the desert, and Jebel Jais rises 1,900 metres into air that can be 10 degrees colder than the coast below. This table shows every location on this page, live, side by side.

The differences that matter day to day: Fujairah and the east coast catch cloud and rain that never reach Dubai, because the Hajar mountains squeeze the moist sea air upwards. Al Ain, away from the sea, gets hotter afternoons and cooler nights than the coast. And Jebel Jais is in a category of its own: the UAE’s highest peak regularly records the country’s lowest temperature, and on the coldest winter mornings it can come close to freezing while Dubai starts the day above 15°C.

Rain in the UAE: When It Falls and What to Expect

Rain is the UAE’s rarest weather event and its most talked about. The country averages only around 80 to 100 millimetres a year, roughly what London can receive in a single wet month, and almost all of it falls between November and March. Some winters deliver a handful of proper rainy days; the summer months, from June to September, are effectively rainless, and any dark cloud then is far more likely to be dust than rain.

When rain does come, it tends to arrive in one of three ways. Winter Mediterranean systems drift down over the Gulf and bring a day or two of steady rain, most often in January, February and March. The Hajar mountains generate their own weather in the east, with convective showers over Al Ain, Fujairah and the mountain wadis, sometimes in the warmer months when the coast stays dry. And tropical systems from the Arabian Sea occasionally push moisture into the south and east, as Cyclone Shaheen did in 2021.

The day the desert flooded

On 16 April 2024 the UAE recorded its heaviest rainfall in 75 years of records: 254 millimetres fell in under 24 hours at Khatm Al Shaklah near Al Ain, and Dubai International Airport measured around 164 millimetres, close to two years of normal rain in a single day. Motorways flooded, flights stopped, and the images travelled the world. Days like that are genuinely exceptional, but they are why a rain forecast in the UAE is never treated casually: drainage is built for a dry country, so even 20 millimetres in an hour can flood underpasses and wadis quickly.

Does the UAE make its own rain?

Partly, yes. The NCM runs one of the world’s most active cloud-seeding programmes, flying aircraft into suitable clouds to release salt particles that encourage droplets to grow and fall as rain. Seeding only works on clouds that are already promising; it cannot create rain from a clear sky, and it is one tool among several in the country’s water strategy, alongside desalination. When you see rain arrive on a day that looked only partly cloudy, seeding may have helped it along, but the cloud had to be there first.

UAE Weather Alerts and Warnings

Official weather warnings in the UAE come from one place: the National Center of Meteorology (NCM). When conditions turn dangerous, the NCM issues colour-coded alerts, and government departments, schools and airlines act on them. No app or website, including this one, replaces those official warnings; what we can do is explain what each colour means so the alert makes sense when it reaches you.

The hazards behind most UAE alerts are a short list. Fog is the winter killer on the motorways: radiation fog forms on still, clear December and January nights and can cut visibility below 50 metres by dawn; police respond with reduced speed limits on the big inter-emirate highways, and those limits are enforced. Dust and sandstorms arrive with shamal winds, mostly in summer, turning the sky orange and pushing air quality to hazardous levels. Heavy rain brings flash flooding in wadis and underpasses rather than river floods. And rough seas in the Gulf and the Gulf of Oman close beaches and stop boats several times a year.

For the official word, check the NCM website or its alerts on social media, and in an emergency follow Dubai Police, Abu Dhabi Police or your emirate’s authorities. Warnings are usually issued for specific areas and hours, so read the map and the timing, not just the colour.

UAE Climate by Month

The UAE has a hot desert climate with exactly two seasons that matter: a long, fierce summer and a short, glorious winter. These are Dubai’s long-term averages, rounded, the pattern every coastal emirate follows within a degree or two. Al Ain and the interior run hotter by day and cooler by night; Jebel Jais runs about 10 degrees cooler than the coast in the same month.

Read the rain column carefully and you have the UAE’s climate in miniature: a year’s worth of rain squeezed into about four months, delivered in a handful of events, and long dry stretches everywhere else. Annual totals average somewhere around 80 to 100 millimetres in Dubai, but the average hides wild swings: some years pass 200 millimetres, others barely reach 30.

Best Time to Visit the UAE

For weather alone, the answer is simple: November to March. That is when the UAE shows the face it advertises, warm days, cool evenings, and a sea that stays swimmable all winter. The trade-offs are crowds and prices, which peak with the weather in December and January.

One honest local note: residents plan their year around the same table, in reverse. The months visitors avoid are when the Emirates empties out, restaurants offer their best deals, and the roads run clear. If your plans are indoor ones, summer is not the ordeal it is made out to be, as long as you respect the midday hours.

Summer Heat: Why It Feels Hotter Than the Number

A UAE summer temperature is only half the story. The Gulf is one of the warmest seas on earth, and in July and August it loads the coastal air with moisture. When 41°C air carries 60 or 70 percent humidity, sweat stops evaporating, and the feels-like temperature, the heat index, can climb past 55°C even though the thermometer never says so. That gap between the number and the feeling is the single most misunderstood thing about UAE weather, and the live panel at the top of this page shows both figures for exactly that reason.

The country organises itself around the heat. Outdoor workers are protected by law with a midday break from 12:30 to 3:00 PM through the peak summer months (15 June to 15 September), enforced by the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation. Cars carry sunshades, buildings are engineered for the load, and life shifts to the evening: in August, the parks, beaches and corniches fill up after 7 PM, when the temperature drops into the mid-thirties and the city comes out.

As for records: the interior desert around Sweihan, near Al Ain, regularly records the country’s highest temperatures each summer, and readings above 52°C have been logged there in extreme events. Coastal cities are capped a few degrees lower by the sea, typically peaking at 47 to 49°C, but with humidity that makes those days feel harder than a dry 52°C inland. At the other extreme, Jebel Jais has recorded temperatures below freezing on winter nights, and a dusting of snow on its summit has been photographed a handful of times, most famously in 2009 and 2017.

Air Quality and Dust in the UAE

The number in the live panel uses the US Air Quality Index, the scale most UAE residents follow. Anything under 50 is good; the UAE’s challenge is that desert dust keeps its baseline higher than most countries’, and on shamal wind days the index can run into the red across the whole country.

The shamal is the wind behind most bad-air days: a north-westerly that picks up sand and dust from the deserts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia and carries it down the Gulf, strongest in late winter and again in early summer. Visibility falls, the sky turns the colour of weak tea, and fine PM2.5 particles do the real health damage because they slip deep into the lungs. The good news is that shamal events are measured in days, not weeks, and the first rain or a clean sea breeze resets the air quickly.

Beach and Sea Conditions

Two seas, two personalities. Dubai, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi face the Arabian Gulf: shallow, warm, and usually gentle, with water temperatures from about 21°C in February to 33°C or more in August, when a swim cools you down far less than you hope. Fujairah faces the Gulf of Oman and the open Indian Ocean: a degree or two cooler, clearer, and the place for snorkelling and diving, with rougher water when the ocean swell is up.

The wave height in the live panel tells you the day’s temper. Under half a metre is a calm, family-friendly sea. Around a metre, small boats stay careful. Above that, red flags go up on the beaches and the NCM’s marine warnings start; the Gulf can build a steep, choppy sea quickly under a shamal even though it is an enclosed waterway. The best sea months overall are October to May: warm-enough water, sane air temperatures, and the longest stretch of settled weather.

Sunrise and Sunset in the UAE

Daylight in the UAE never swings the way it does in northern countries. The longest day of the year, in June, runs about 13 hours 50 minutes; the shortest, in December, about 10 hours 30 minutes. Today’s exact times for the selected location are in the live panel above; in Dubai today the sun rises at — and sets at —.

Sunset carries a practical meaning here beyond the view: it is also Maghrib, the evening prayer, and in Ramadan it is the iftar moment when the fasting day ends and the cannons fire. If you need the day’s prayer schedule alongside the sun times, our UAE Prayer Times page runs on the same clock, with live times for every emirate.

Frequently Asked Questions

Live conditions on this page come from the Open-Meteo forecast and marine models and Copernicus CAMS air-quality data, refreshed through the day, with climate averages compiled from long-term records for Dubai. Forecasts are guidance, not guarantees; for official warnings during severe weather, always follow the National Center of Meteorology and your emirate’s authorities.