KUWAIT/TEHRAN: Kuwait witnessed cold weather and dust on Sunday, with visibility improving by evening, Kuwait Meteorological Center said. Acting head of the center Dhrar Al-Ali told KUNA that Kuwait was affected Saturday evening by high-pressure area cold winds from the northwest at speeds of 60 km/h, which caused low visibility under a thousand meters due to dust. He indicated a gradual improvement of visibility as cold weather will continue with light to moderate windspeed. He revealed that the lowest temperature would reach under three degrees Celsius in agricultural and open areas, adding that cold weather would persist probably until Tuesday.

A sand and dust storm also hit southwestern Iran on Sunday, resulting in the closure of schools and public buildings and the cancellation of flights due to poor visibility, state media reported. A thick yellow fog shrouded the oil-rich provinces of Khuzestan and Bushehr, which border Iraq and are more than 400 km from Tehran. Buildings were barely visible in images carried by the official IRNA news agency, while residents protected themselves with masks.

In southwestern Iran, schools and public services will remain closed on Sunday, a working day, and all flights are suspended until further notice due to visibility having been reduced to 100 m, Tasnim news agency reported. In the city of Abadan in Khuzestan province, the air quality was considered “hazardous” on Sunday, with an index of 500, exceeding by more than 25 times the pollution rates deemed acceptable by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The storm arrived from neighboring Iraq, while another dust storm hit the city of Zabol in the southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province, according to state TV. Dust and sandstorms have long affected the region but have become more intense and more frequent in recent years, with Iran particularly hard hit. Experts associate this trend with overgrazing, drought, deforestation and overuse of river water.

Iran, with a population of more than 85 million, is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change and the rise in global temperatures. It has also endured repeated droughts as well as regular flooding, a phenomenon made worse when torrential rain falls on sunbaked earth.

Meanwhile, Iran announced the closure of offices and schools in many provinces across the country on Sunday due to a cold snap and energy shortages, state media reported. Iran is an energy giant, with the world’s second-largest reserves of natural gas, according to the US Energy Information Administration. But the country has been forced to ration electricity in recent weeks due to a lack of gas and fuel to feed its power plants.

Schools and public offices were closed down in the northern provinces of Gilan, Golestan and Ardabil as well as Alborz west of the capital Tehran “due to the cold weather and in order to manage fuel consumption,” official news agency IRNA said. It reported that similar decisions were taken due to the cold in several other provinces including Tehran and Mazandaran in the north, Kermanshah in the west, Ghazvin in the center and South Khorasan in the east.

In recent days, unexpected power cuts have affected several provinces as well as the capital Tehran, leading to the frustration of the citizens. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Thursday urged citizens to use “two degrees less” heating to save energy, in what has already become a campaign promoted by his government.

Iran was the world’s seventh-largest producer of crude oil in 2022 and has the third-largest proven reserves behind Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, according to the US Energy Information Administration. But Iran’s electricity grid suffers from a lack of investment in infrastructure, partly due to Western sanctions.In July, authorities ordered the working hours to be halved for several days in government institutions to save energy, that time in the middle of a heat wave. – Agencies