The UAE has edged past the harshest stretch of its summer, though anyone stepping outside this week would be forgiven for not quite believing it. On Thursday, the National Centre of Meteorology forecast highs of 45°C in Dubai, 44°C in Abu Dhabi and as much as 47°C in Al Ain, with the previous day’s reading in Al Ain’s Sweihan area touching 49.7°C. Coastal humidity is expected to build again overnight into Friday morning, with the NCM flagging a chance of mist and reduced visibility for early commuters.
That lingering heat is exactly what forecasters mean when they say the transition out of summer is a slow one rather than a switch that flips overnight. The country has just come through Ayam Al Ghayth, the roughly six-week stretch of peak summer heat that traditionally runs from early July to around August 10. It was a brutal run by any measure: temperatures crossed 51°C on August 5, and overnight lows barely dipped below 35°C at their worst.
According to the NCM’s own climate data for the month, an average August day in the UAE runs to a high of between 40.9°C and 43.2°C, with overnight lows averaging 29.3°C to 31°C and relative humidity climbing to around 47 per cent in the second half of the month, a level meteorologists say makes mornings and evenings feel more oppressive even when the thermometer itself has started to ease.
Relief, when it comes, will arrive gradually and largely after dark first. Ibrahim Al Jarwan, chairman of the Emirates Astronomy Society, expects the change to become noticeable around August 24, when the star Suhail, known internationally as Canopus, rises over the UAE’s south-eastern horizon before dawn. It is a moment the region has tracked for generations. “We are not talking about cold weather,” Al Jarwan said, but people will notice the atmosphere shift and conditions moderate.
Suhail itself has no influence on the weather. Professor Hamid Al Naimiy, general director of the Sharjah Academy for Astronomy, Space Sciences and Technology, has previously stated plainly that the star’s rise has nothing to do with changes in temperature, wind or humidity. What it offers instead is exactly the kind of reliability the weather itself cannot: while rain, heat and wind vary from year to year, the apparent movement of the stars repeats with total predictability, which is why communities across the Arabian Peninsula built a working calendar around it long before modern forecasting existed. Historically, Suhail’s appearance guided far more than small talk about the weather. Bedouin communities, pearl divers and fishermen used its rise to time the planting of palm shoots, the return of fish to warming coastal waters and the start of the fishing season, according to regional astronomy bodies including Al Sadeem Observatory.
Once temperatures do begin to ease, humidity is expected to rise before it falls, and Al Jarwan has explained why that trade-off happens. Warm air simply holds far more water vapour than cool air at the same relative humidity: a cubic metre of air at 40°C and 80 per cent humidity can carry roughly 50 grams of water, he said, against less than 15 grams in air at 20°C and the same humidity. That is part of why September and October, historically the UAE’s most humid months, often feel heavier than the peak of summer despite lower readings on the thermometer. Early morning fog and dew typically make their first appearance from late August, becoming more frequent through September.
None of this rules out a sting in the tail. Forecasters point to Zafarat Al Qayth, a traditional term for short, sharp returns of intense heat that can follow even after the seasonal peak has passed. These spells do not reverse the broader cooling trend, but they are common enough that residents packing away summer routines too early sometimes find themselves caught out.
The more settled stretch, by most accounts, begins around the autumnal equinox on September 23, after which evenings are expected to grow steadily more comfortable. Daytime cooling lags behind, with a more noticeable drop typically not felt until November, and the fuller seasonal change continuing into mid-December. Traditional seasonal markers such as Virgo, Libra and Scorpio, used historically alongside stars like Suhail to track the passage of time, broadly correspond to that same September-to-November stretch in local seasonal reckoning.
For now, the numbers on the forecast still read like peak summer, and will for at least another ten days or so. What has changed is the direction of travel: the worst is behind, even if the UAE will feel the last of it for a while yet.
