A thick blanket of fog engulfed the UAE overnight, forcing police to reduce speed limits on several motorways.
The misty weather extended almost across the entire country.
Forecasters at the National Centre of Meteorology issued an alert and speed limits were reduced to 80kph as visibility fell below 1,000 metres.
The traffic rule, introduced in Abu Dhabi in 2019, means speed limits are capped whenever visibility is poor. Heavy vehicles are also suspended from driving during bouts of bad weather.
The fog is expected to lift by 9am, leaving a fair to partly cloudy.
Temperatures will fall slightly, reaching a high of 34°C in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
Winds will be light to moderate.
The sea will be slight to moderate in the Arabian Gulf and slight in Oman Sea.
Humidity will rise again overnight, raising the risk of fog or mist forming over some coastal and internal areas on Wednesday and again on Thursday and Friday.
Fog is common at this time of the year as the seasons change.
Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?
The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.
Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.
“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.
The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.
The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.
Bloomberg
