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Waleed Alkhamees is a tour guide and life long resident of Kuwait City in the Middle Eastern country, where the relentless heat forces locals to leave during the summer
A man who grew up in the world’s most sweltering city is witnessing it getting hotter and hotter every year.
Waleed Alkhamees has spent his entire life in Kuwait City – a place the tour guide says “no one ever moves away from”. That is despite the fact that the Middle Eastern settlement is the most relentlessly, overwhelmingly hot city in the world.
On 21 July 2016, the Mitribah weather station in northern Kuwait recorded a temperature of 54C (129F) – the third-highest reading in the world. Climate scientists are warning that the country is heating up faster than the rest of the world, with temperatures predicted to rise by 5.5C (10F) by the end of the century compared to the 2000s. In 2021, temperatures soared above 50C (122F) for 19 days, a record that could be broken this year.
“Right now, the weather is perfect. It is 19C in the morning, 17C in the evenings. But in mid June, it goes above 50C. It is the hottest city in the world,” Waleed, a tour guide with tourHQ, told the Mirror.
“Everybody is trying to keep indoors, as everywhere in Kuwait is air conditioned. Most of the locals escape from the heat and go outside Kuwait during the summer. Businesses close down. By law you can’t work outdoors from 10am to 5pm, so the workers work from midnight until the morning.”
Waleed has seen the average temperatures creep up every year. Each summer he says it feels like it’s got a little hotter. While it has always been a place where the mercury rides high, those living in the largely concrete made city are having to make more and more adjustments just to cope.
Massively state subsidised electricity – paid for along with the healthcare and education system from vast oil reserves that keeps the tax rate sitting at zero – allows most of the 3.3million people who live in the city to run their air conditioning units constantly.
Almost all enclosed public spaces are blasted with a fake icy chill for most of the day and night while streets are doused in clouds of cooling water. A government ban on working outdoors from 10am to 5pm during the summer months is designed to prevent people keeling over and dying in weather that is a constant danger to human health.
However, if you venture to Kuwait City during the summer you may notice that the rule isn’t strictly enforced. Workers, typically having recently migrated to the country, brave the heat and the ban to toil on the streets, their entire bodies covered head to toe to offer some relief from the unforgiving sun.
Waleed takes tourists around the city to show them the sites which include the space-ship like Kuwait Towers, which rise above the city in a clear symbol of its wealth in a style that shines straight out of the 1970s. The Grand Mosque and old Souk are the other big draws.
His groups tend to be around 80% American and the rest European, in a reflection of the large US military base Camp Arifjan in the south east of the country. Tours continue during the hottest months of June and July, with holidaymakers rarely leaving air conditioned cars as they explore the city.
Those Westerners looking for relief in the form of a cool beer in the evening will not find it in Kuwait, which operates a strict and enforced no-alcohol policy even in hotels popular with tourists. Among those who are confident in the strength of their sunscreen, the city’s beach is particularly popular. It is a sweeping, sandy bay that is among the longest in the Middle East and has good diving spots.
Despite the relentless nature of the heat – which causes pigeons to abandon flying for parts of the day and has even wiped out marine life in the bays – Waleed says his compatriots will not leave.
“Kuwait City has gotten hotter. For years now. It is hotter and hotter every year. I am worried about global warming. It’s half a degree every couple of years. But we won’t move away. Kuwaitis never move away. There are lots of benefits in Kuwait,” he said.
“The currency is the highest currency in the world, we pay zero tax, everything is subsidised by the government, fuel cost is half that of Saudi Arabia. Medication and education is free. People, they don’t move away.”
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