SAUDI ARABIA

Jeddah's skies clear; blustery weather moves north

February 14, 2018

By Mohammed Dawood and Ibrahim Alawi

Okaz/Saudi Gazette

JEDDAH — The weather in Jeddah was clear and stable on Wednesday as the sandstorms started moving to the northern areas.

The General Authority for Meteorology and Environment (GAME) expected the temperatures to fall down in the central and eastern areas of the Kingdom but said this drop would be accompanied by active winds, which will raise dust and sandstorms reducing visibility to about 2 kilometers. The skies will remain cloudy or partially cloudy.

The temperatures will be 33 degrees Celsius in Makkah, 27 in Madinah, 23 in Riyadh, 29 in Jeddah and 25 in Dammam.

On Tuesday, the Department of Education in Jeddah, in a clear defiance to the authority's warnings, asked all schools to stay open but many parents prevented their children from attending classes.

Some of the parents said they feared for the general health of their sons and daughters because of the sandstorm so they stopped them from going to schools on Tuesday.

A number of parents said they were perplexed by the contradiction in the met authority's warnings and the decision of the Department of Education to open the schools.

The authority in 11 repeated warnings said the dust would start at 9 a.m. and will continue until at 4 p.m. on Tuesday and that the visibility would be reduced to less than a kilometer.

Abdulaziz Al-Ghamdi, a parent, said he took his son to school in response to the department's decision but as soon as he reached his office, he received a telephone call from the school asking him to come back and collect his son because the classes were empty.

"I was surprised to see my son sitting outside the school gate in the middle of the dust waiting for me to come and collect him," he said.

Al-Ghamdi asked why the schools were closed in Makkah and Madinah, but were not closed in Jeddah when all three cities experienced the blistery weather?

Saeed Al-Sulami, another parent, said he took his decision not to send his children to school on Tuesday.

He asked what the Department of Education would depend on to suspend schools if not the reports of the Civil Defense or the met authority.

A source at the Department of Education said the schools would be suspended only if the visibly was less than 500 meters, not a kilometer on Tuesday as per the forecasts of the authority.


February 14, 2018
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