Bahrain
Bahrain Geography & Climate
Geography
Bahrain is an archipelago in the Persian Gulf, about thirty-three islands in total covering roughly 780 square kilometres — though the figure grows every few years, because a substantial share of the country is reclaimed land.
The main island
Bahrain Island holds most of the population and is around fifty kilometres long by eighteen wide. It is low and flat, rising to just 134 metres at the Jabal ad-Dukhan, the Mountain of Smoke, in the centre — a limestone dome under which the region’s first oil was found in 1932.
Springs and the northern strip
Fresh water rising through the seabed and through onshore springs is the reason anyone settled here, and it made the northern strip of the island a belt of date gardens and cultivation while the south stayed desert. That water table has been over-drawn and most of the springs have failed; the gardens that remain are irrigated.
Made land
Land reclamation has added a large fraction to the country’s area since the 1960s — the Seef district, Amwaj Islands, Durrat Al Bahrain and the financial harbour are all built on it. The cost has been to the shallow seagrass beds and reefs, which supported the pearl banks and support the dugong population.
The causeway
The King Fahd Causeway, twenty-five kilometres of bridge and embankment, has connected Bahrain to Saudi Arabia since 1986 and carries enormous weekend traffic.
Other islands
Muharraq, joined by bridges, holds the old pearling town and the airport. The Hawar Islands, close to the Qatari coast, are a protected bird area.
Climate Patterns
Bahrain has an arid desert climate, and the thing that distinguishes it from the interior of Arabia is humidity — a low island surrounded by shallow, very warm sea produces summer conditions that are among the least comfortable anywhere people live.
Winter
November to March is genuinely pleasant: days between 17 and 25°C, low humidity, cool evenings that occasionally need a jacket. Almost all the year’s rain falls in these months, and there is very little of it — around seventy millimetres a year, in a handful of short downpours that the drainage cannot cope with.
Summer
June to September brings daytime highs of 40 to 45°C with relative humidity frequently above eighty per cent, producing apparent temperatures well beyond the reading. Nights offer little relief, staying above 30°C. A midday work ban operates for outdoor labour through the hottest months.
The wind
The shamal blows from the north-west, strongest in early summer, raising dust and cutting visibility for days at a time. The qaws, a southerly, brings hot dusty air in spring and autumn.
The sea
The Gulf is shallow and reaches above 33°C in late summer, which is why it provides no cooling and why the humidity is so high. In winter it drops to around 18°C.
Practical consequences
Everything is air-conditioned and the country is built on the assumption that people move between conditioned spaces. Walking any distance outdoors between May and September is genuinely unwise, and visitors underestimate how fast dehydration arrives in this combination of heat and humidity.