Dubai: It was so cold in parts of the Saudi Arabia recently that, in one instance, the water dripping from a camel's eyes froze as the mercury dipped to -6 for first time in 30 years, local media reported.
A video showing the water freezing while dropping from the camel’s eyes has gone viral on social media.
Over the past few days, several Saudi cities have been witnessing a severe drop in temperatures. The mercury dropped to an average of -3 degrees Celsius in some cities while snow covered six northern cities.
The city of Turaif in the Northern Border Region recorded on Wednesday -6 degrees Celsius, which is the lowest temperature the Kingdom has witnessed over the past 30 years.
On Friday, the temperature recorded in Turaif, near the border of Jordan, was -3 degrees Celsius while the mercury in the city of Qurayyat on the border with Jordan, dipped to -2 degrees. Similar was the case in Hail in the northern part of the country.
The winter will be the harshest during the weekend, with the capital Riyadh expected to record freezing temperatures reaching -3 degrees, according to a report from the National Centre of Meteorology (NCM). Extremely cold arctic air masses from Siberia are currently sweeping the vast terrain of Saudi Arabia.
Hussain Al Qahtani, spokesman of NCM, said that Saudi Arabia will witness a sharp drop in temperatures by the end of the week in the northern and central regions. It is expected that Riyadh will record between one to three degrees below zero, he said.
The low temperature, which reached 8 degrees at noon, did not prevent worshipers in Riyadh from heading to mosques to perform Friday prayers. The outdoor spaces in a number of cafés were found empty as the customers preferred to sit indoor adjacent to heaters.
