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The United Arab Emirates has tried to wring itself out after the heaviest-recorded rainfall ever to hit the desert nation, with its main airport allowing more flights even as floodwater covered portions of major highways and communities.
Dubai International Airport, the world's busiest for international travel, allowed global carriers on Thursday morning to again fly into Terminal 1 at the airfield.
And long-haul carrier Emirates, crucial to east-west travel, began allowing local passengers to arrive at Terminal 3, their base of operations.
However, Dubai Airport CEO Paul Griffiths said the airfield needed at least another 24 hours to resume operations close to its usual schedule.
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Australian Paralympian Taylor Corry said on social media that she had been in transit for 33 hours due to the flooding.
Meanwhile, one desert community in Dubai saw floodwaters continue to rise to as much as 1 metre as civil defence officials struggled to pump out the water.
"We were looking at the radar thinking, 'Goodness, if this hits, then it's going to be cataclysmic,'" Mr Griffiths said of the storm.
"And indeed it was."
The airport ended up needing 22 tankers with vacuum pumps to get water off its grounds. Mr Griffiths acknowledged that taxiways flooded during the rains, though the airport's runways remained free of water to safely operate. Online videos of a FlyDubai flight landing with its reverse thrust spraying out water caught the world's attention.
"It looks dramatic, but it actually isn't that dramatic," Mr Griffiths said.
Thousands queue at airport
Emirates, whose operations had been struggling since the storm on Tuesday, had stopped travellers flying out of the UAE from checking into their flights as they tried to move out connecting passengers.
Pilots and flight crews also had a hard time reaching the airport given the water on roadways.
But on Thursday, Emirates lifted that order to allow customers into the airport. That saw some 2,000 people come into Terminal 3, again sparking long lines, Mr Griffiths said.
Others who arrived at the airport described hours-long waits to get their baggage, with some just giving up to head home or to whatever hotel would have them.
The UAE, a hereditarily ruled, autocratic nation on the Arabian Peninsula, typically sees little rainfall in its arid desert climate. However, a massive storm forecasters had been warning about for days blew through the country's seven sheikhdoms.
By the end of Tuesday, more than 142 millimetres of rainfall had soaked Dubai over 24 hours. An average year sees 94.7 millimetres of rain at Dubai International Airport. Other areas of the country saw even more precipitation.
Drainage system overwhelmed
Intense floods also struck neighbouring Oman in recent days. Authorities on Thursday raised the death toll from those storms to at least 21 killed.
The UAE's drainage systems quickly became overwhelmed on Tuesday, flooding out neighbourhoods, business districts and even portions of the 12-lane Sheikh Zayed Road highway running through Dubai.
The state-run WAM news agency called the rain "a historic weather event" that surpassed "anything documented since the start of data collection in 1949".
In a message to the nation late on Wednesday, Emirati leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi, said authorities would "quickly work on studying the condition of infrastructure throughout the UAE and to limit the damage caused".
On Thursday, people waded through oil-slicked floodwater to reach cars earlier abandoned, checking to see if their engines still ran. Tanker trucks with vacuums began reaching some areas outside of Dubai's downtown core for the first time as well. Schools remain closed until next week.
Authorities have offered no overall damage or injury information from the floods, which killed at least one person.
The flooding sparked speculation that the UAE's aggressive campaign of cloud seeding — flying small planes through clouds dispersing chemicals aimed at getting rain to fall — may have contributed to the deluge. But experts said the storm systems that produced the rain were forecast well in advance and that cloud seeding alone would not have caused such flooding.
Scientists also say climate change is responsible for more intense and more frequent extreme storms, droughts, floods and wildfires around the world. Dubai hosted the United Nations' COP28 climate talks just last year.
AP