Saudi Arabia: Covering the Rain  · Global Voices
Amira Al Hussaini

Saudi Arabia's citizen media community pulled all the stops to cover torrential rains which struck Riyadh today.
A dedicated blog was set up in hours to aggregate content from Twitter and YouTube, featuring Twitter updates and videos uploaded on to video sharing site YouTube. The blog is entitled The Riyadh Rain Catastrophe.
This video by s123ssa shows flooded roads and cars manoeuvring their way through the floods, with onlookers cheering the brave drivers:
People wading through the ‘lakes’ formed by the rain can also be seen.
Hamodhamad filmed the rain, and the floods it created here:
This video also shows cars making their way through the ‘rivers’ as well as several stalled cars, which did not survive the experience. In one clip, a truck is speeding through the water, trying to overtake a Land Cruiser.
This video, by flv.2, shows drenched neighbourhoods:
For more videos, check out the blog above.
Saudi Jeans‘ Ahmed Al Omran has also uploaded several excellent videos showing the extensive damage and flooding caused by the storm.
Among them is this video, by sssuuuwww, which shows students rescued from a bus, which ‘sunk':
Al Omran writes:
It is raining heavily on the capital Riyadh at the moment, and the situation looks disastrous. From what I can see, it is a scary reminder of the Jeddah floods. People are stuck in highways and streets around the city, especially in the north and east. Major roads are blocked. At least one person is dead. The Civil Defense and the Ministry of Health have announced a state of emergency. You can follow the news on Twitter in real time using the hashtag #riyadhrain. You can also use RiyadRain.com, which aggregates content from Twitter. People in Riyadh are advised to stay home as heavy rains are expected to continue.
Saudi Arabia: When it rains in Riyadh, it pours