You know you live in a desert when…

… school gets called off because of rain. I woke up today to… thunder? Muscat gets about a sum total of 5 inches of rain every year, and we got about 4 of them today. It was, by Muscat standards, a major storm. School gets called off, even when the school is within walking distance. Our school got called off also, due to the risk of flash flooding on all the highways. There are numerous wadi’s throughout the city, and a wadi is simply a dry riverbed. These become major rivers during even small rains, so during a major storm like this one, the city is shut down. It was nice to see rain again though. The weather has been getting increasingly hot, so the rain should keep everything cool for a few days.