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Dubai: Nobody in the UAE is raking leaves this week. There are no maple trees turning red on Sheikh Zayed Road, no crunch underfoot on the way to the metro, and nobody is digging out a wool coat.
And yet autumn arrives here all the same. It just announces itself differently: through a coffee cup, a foggy windscreen, an evening walk that no longer feels like a punishment, and a countdown to the reopening of Global Village.
So when does autumn actually start?
Officially, at 4.05am on Wednesday 23 September.
That is the moment of the autumnal equinox, when the sun sits directly above the equator before moving south. Day and night become roughly equal in length over the following week, and from then on, the nights get longer.
Meteorologists count earlier, treating September as the first month of autumn based on temperature.
Traditionally, many in the region look earlier still, to the rising of the Suhail star in late August, long taken as the sign that the worst of the heat is about to ease. Ask five people in the UAE when autumn starts and you may get three different answers, all of them correct.
Sign one: the pumpkin spice latte
For a large part of the world, autumn begins not with a star or an equinox but with a drink.
The PSL first appeared in 2003 and has since become shorthand for the season itself.
Starbucks own chief executive has said there are no plans to make it permanent, precisely because it defines the season.
In the UAE, where outdoor temperatures still sit in the high 30s Celsius, the iced version tends to do most of the work. The seasonal menu is a small, strangely reliable signal that the calendar has turned, even when the thermometer has not.
Sign two: you can go outside again
The shift is gradual, with morning walks leaving you no longer a sweaty mess and not having to run the AC the entire day.
At the start of autumn, average highs sit around 39°C, with lows around 26°C, according to the Emirates Astronomy Society. By early November, the averages ease to around 32°C by day and 18°C at night. By the end of the season in late December, highs average 26°C and lows 14°C.
What changes first is the evening. The window after sunset stretches a little longer each week, and the people who disappeared indoors in June start reappearing on beachfront paths, running tracks and park benches.
Sign three: fog on the morning drive
Humidity stays high through September and October, and it only starts to drop meaningfully from mid-November.
Combine that humidity with nights that are finally cooling and the result is a very UAE version of autumn mist: thick morning fog rolling across highways and turning the Dubai skyline into a row of floating tower tops. Fog warnings on phones become a regular part of early commutes through this stretch of the year.
Sign four: the flamingos come back
The birds notice the change before most residents do.
The UAE sits on major migration routes linking Europe, Central Asia and Africa, and the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi estimates the country receives nearly two million migratory birds every year. Some stay for the winter. Many are simply passing through.
Autumn is when that passage is easiest to see. Waders such as godwits, Kentish plovers, stints and sandpipers can crowd the mudflats at Dubai’s Ras Al Khor or the Khor Al Baidah wetlands in Umm Al Quwain one day, refuelling on the way south, and be gone the next.
The flamingos are the arrivals people wait for.
Greater flamingos, many of them from lakes in northern Iran, Turkey and Central Asia, settle into the shallows at Ras Al Khor Wildlife Sanctuary at the mouth of Dubai Creek. The sanctuary is a Ramsar-listed wetland of mudflats, lagoons and mangroves, with public hides that let visitors watch the birds without disturbing them, and the towers of the city standing directly behind the flocks. Entry is free. Ospreys, spoonbills, Western reef egrets and Caspian terns share the same water.
In Abu Dhabi, Al Wathba Wetland Reserve has recorded more than 260 bird species. It is also the only site in the Arabian Gulf where greater flamingos breed regularly, and its flamingo numbers can climb to around 4,000.
On the east coast, the mangroves of Khor Kalba draw herons and waders through the cooler months.
Sign five: the doors start opening
If there is one true marker of the season here, it is the reopening calendar.
Global Village returns for Season 31 on Wednesday 14 October, under the theme “A More Wonderful World”, and runs until May 2027. It closes every summer because most of it is outdoors.
Dubai Miracle Garden and Dubai Safari Park also close for the hottest months and return as the weather turns. Weekend markets reappear, restaurant terraces that sat empty all summer are set up again, and desert camps start taking bookings.
In a city that spends summer indoors, autumn is the season of things reopening.
Sign six: the first clouds
Rain is not quite on the way yet, but the sky starts to change.
Winter clouds typically begin appearing from mid-October, and the chance of rain rises later in the season. Average rainfall is under 2mm in October, rising to around 5 to 6mm in November and 16 to 18mm in December.
That is modest by most countries’ standards. In the UAE, it is enough for the first grey sky of the season to be photographed, posted and discussed.
Sign seven: shorter days
The quietest sign is the light. After the equinox, sunset creeps earlier, and the evening call to prayer arrives while offices are still emptying out.
There will be no leaves on the ground this autumn. There will be fog, a seasonal coffee, a slowly cooling evening and a gradual reopening of the city’s outdoor life, and in the UAE, that is how the season turns.
