The United Arab Emirates is today attempting to dry out after the heaviest rain ever recorded in the desert nation caused utter chaos – but there are suspicions the horrific flooding in Dubai and elsewhere may have been self-inflicted.

The typically scorching UAE heavily relies on cloud-seeding – a technique which sees aircraft fire salt flares into clouds to speed up condensation and induce rainfall – to provide its groundwater. 

Flight-tracking data analysed by the Associated Press showed one aircraft affiliated with the UAE’s cloud-seeding efforts flew around the country on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Ahmed Habib, a meteorologist at the UAE’s National Centre for Meteorology (NCM), told Bloomberg several cloud-seeding sorties were flown in the days before the unprecedented rainfall hit. 

As speculation over the cloud-seeding grew, the NCM later denied in comments to CNBC that the operation had taken place on Tuesday in the hours before the storm – but confirmed the operation was performed on Sunday and Monday.   

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