A happy couple carried on with their wedding despite severe flooding after heavy rain in Malaysia.
Sofiyah Nabilah and her husband Zulhilmi have been together since 2014 and decided to push through with the ceremony despite the inclement weather.
The pair, both wearing white, stood in the middle of the muddy, knee-deep deluge to take wedding photos in the town of Klang in Selangor state on December 19. They wore huge grins even as debris and pieces of wood floated around them during the pictorial.
They held their wedding reception under a large tent at the Maria homestay as rain poured down and raised the water level even more.
The flooding is said to be one of the worst that Malaysia has experienced in recent years, with a month’s worth of rain falling within days, Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob said.
Dr. Zaini Ujang, secretary-general of Malaysia’s Environment and Water Ministry, said: ‘The annual rainfall in Kuala Lumpur is 2,400mm and this means yesterday’s rainfall has exceeded the average rainfall for a month. It is something beyond our expectations and only occurs once every hundred years.’
Authorities said at least eight people have died in the deluge. Some 21,000 people nationwide have been evacuated to relief centres.
The seasonal northeast monsoon, as well as a low-pressure area that had formed in the South China Sea, reportedly worsened the severity of the rains.
The Malaysia Meteorological Department took down heavy rain warnings on Sunday evening as the severe weather abated.
Experts have also linked the disaster to climate change. Environmentalist Dr. Renard Siew, Climate Change Advisor to Malaysia’s Centre for Governance and Political Studies, said: ‘It’s becoming harder for climatologists to predict the weather with a higher level of accuracy due to the climate change phenomenon.
‘The government has said that the flood is a once in a hundred years event. But to be honest, over the years we’ve seen so many of these extreme weather events happening across China, Germany and New York.’