Rain Through Tuesday: Can Your Team Work From Home Tomorrow Morning Without Anything Stopping?

Rain is one of the top searches in Saudi Arabia today, Saturday November 7, 2026. The National Center for Meteorology's early warning page shows 53 active alerts at the time of writing, 11 of them red for heavy rain, and the Center expects the system to widen and intensify on Monday and Tuesday, November 10. The practical question for any business is not whether it will rain, but this: if you decide tomorrow that your team works from home, do your systems work from home too? This article gives you a one-hour test to run tonight. We explained the alert colours in our weather alerts article, and offline invoicing in our point-of-sale article for the rainy season.

This week in numbers

• 53 active alerts and 11 red alerts on the automated early warning system today. Every red alert is for heavy rain, on governorates in 6 regions: Makkah, Madinah, Hail, Northern Borders, Asir and Jazan.
• The system began on Friday November 6 and lasts until Tuesday November 10, intensifying on Monday and Tuesday over most of the Kingdom, according to the NCM spokesman as reported by Akhbaar 24.
• 5 days of remote schooling in Jeddah and Rabigh schools, from Sunday 1 to Thursday 5 November, according to the Makkah Region Emirate announcement. It was posted at about 11:41 pm on Saturday October 31, hours before the working day began.

That last figure matters most to an employer: the decision that changes your staff's day can arrive before midnight. The employee whose children stay home on the Madrasati platform, or whose road is cut by floodwater, will ask you in the morning: do I work from home? That answer should not be improvised at 7 am.

Where a business breaks on its first work-from-home day

In our work with small and mid-sized businesses, working from home rarely fails because of the employee. It fails because of 5 things designed on the assumption that everyone is in the office:

• Software that only runs on an office machine: an accounting or inventory system installed on an internal server or a single PC, with no secure route to it from outside.
• Files on the desktop: contracts and quotations saved on the office computer rather than in a shared space.
• The landline: the customer service number rings in an empty office, with no forwarding to a mobile or an app.
• Paper approvals: a purchase or payment order waiting for a signature that cannot be given from home.
• An unprotected personal device: an employee opens customer data on the family laptop with no lock and no two-factor check.

A ready official reference: the Telework Cybersecurity Controls

You do not need to invent a checklist. The National Cybersecurity Authority issued the Telework Cybersecurity Controls (TCC) as an extension of the Essential Cybersecurity Controls, and published an implementation guide, GTCC-1:2023. The guide splits the controls into 3 main domains and 16 subdomains: 3 under governance, 12 under defense, and 1 under third-party and cloud computing. First check whether your organisation is legally bound by them; if it is not, they are still the best free checklist you will find. The 5 subdomains that touch a rainy day most directly:

• Identity and access management: who logs in from outside the office, and with what verification.
• Mobile devices security: the phones and laptops that carry company data home.
• Data and information protection: where files live when nobody is in the office.
• Backup and recovery management: what happens if the office itself loses power.
• Cloud computing and hosting cybersecurity: cloud systems work from anywhere, provided access rights are set correctly.

The one-hour test: run it tonight, not on Monday morning

Pick one employee from each department and ask them to carry out 4 real tasks from home tonight, and note what fails:

1. Log in to the core system (accounting, sales or inventory) and issue a test document.
2. Open the latest contract or quotation sent to a customer.
3. Receive a call on the company's main number.
4. Approve a request that needs their manager's sign-off.

Every task that failed is tomorrow's work before office hours: call forwarding, moving the folder to a shared space, switching on two-factor authentication, or a temporary delegation of approvals. Then send the team one message tonight: who works from home if a decision comes, who must come in because their work is on site, and the emergency number.

The Origami view

We read this year's rainy season as a free business continuity test. A business that moved its systems to the cloud and connected its phone line and approvals to an app needs no special decision on a rainy day: the employee opens the laptop and carries on. A business whose software still sits on a PC in the corner of the office loses a full working day with every red alert.

We do not recommend a big project right now. We recommend tonight's test, then a short list of fixes before Monday, then a wider plan once the weather clears. If you want us to review with you which of your systems work outside the office and which do not, contact us or see our services.

Conclusion

• The rain system lasts until Tuesday November 10 and intensifies on Monday and Tuesday.
• A remote schooling decision can come before midnight, so prepare your work-from-home answer in advance.
• Run the one-hour test tonight with 4 real tasks.
• Use the 16 TCC subdomains as a checklist, even if you are not bound by them.