Dubai floods: Cat rescued by police after clinging to car door during heaviest rainfall in 75 years

The video shows a stranded cat caught in the Dubai flood, as the desert city was hit by the worst rainfall in 75 years. In the short clip, a police officer wades through waist-deep flood water and pulls the frightened feline to safety.

Up to 259.5mm (10.2in) of rain fell in the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday. The state-run WAM news agency called the rains on Tuesday “a historic weather event” that surpassed “anything documented since the start of data collection in 1949”.

Did cloud seeding cause the storm?

Questions have been asked as to whether cloud seeding, a process that the UAE frequently conducts, could have caused the heavy rains. Cloud seeding is a process in which chemicals are implanted into clouds to increase rainfall in an environment where water scarcity is a concern. The UAE, located in one of the hottest and driest regions on earth, has been leading the effort to seed clouds and increase precipitation. But the UAE's meteorology agency told Reuters there were no such operations before the storm.