Qatar Paints Roads Blue in Wake of Incredibly Heat Levels

For those who might’ve stumbled upon a post about the blue streets of Qatar, they might’ve thought that it was some sort of elaborate hoax. Perhaps somebody was trying to pull a prank and trick the people of social media. After all, painting the streets blue doesn’t seem to make much practical sense…. or does it?

There’s no trickery to be seen here, folks! This is a very real story. In fact, the reasoning behind the idea might just have us questioning what we do with our roadways here in America.

As Qatar faces some intense heat, they’re always considering ways to stay cool. Many of these are conventional but others require a little bit of outside thinking. A basic understanding of how heat works teaches us that dark surfaces are more likely to hold heat. Furthermore, once they absorb this heat, it then radiates back into the atmosphere. Because of this, an already hot area with blacktop added can feel like the intensity of the heat is multiplied. With the intense heat in Qatar, it’s not hard to see how this could create issues.

Therefore, an experimental project was carried out by put Qatar‘s Public Works Authority to combat the concept. By painting the roadways blue, it is believed that temperatures will drop on the surface by 60 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The overall hope is to cool the ambient air as the radiant heat declines. This will act as not only a comfort feature. Instead, the hope is that it may help with heat-related illness as well.

 

The cherry on the proverbial sundae is that it ends up looking pretty cool as well. Anyone getting Mario Kart Rainbow Road vibes here?

Those familiar with the project seem to think that it should have a pretty long lifespan, even with traffic driving over it. This means that the folks who end up using the streets will have something nice to look at. Will we see more blue streets in the future?