Sunday, October 9, 2011

Haboob

A couple of regular readers of DIT (one of whom is celebrating his birthday today so Happy Birthday!!!) were traveling in Arizona on Oct 4, 2011

...and we wondered if they knew about or were in the Haboob that rolled through Phoenix on that day.

Fortunately they were not in the storm but had heard about it.

So, what exactly is a Haboob?  And what did they escape?

Well, Haboob is the name for the humongous dust storms that occur from time to time in desert areas.

In fact, Haboob is Arabic for "strong wind"

And, yikes, these are definitely strong winds !!!

The most recent Haboob was in the Phoenix area on Tues, Oct 4, 2011 and was reported to be 60 miles wide!

As you can imagine, this huge wall of dust caused many problems, downing trees, producing massive traffic tie ups with wrecks, and more.

So what is a Haboob and what does it look like?

Well, THIS LINK shows video footage of the storm rolling into Phoenix

And if you want to know more about this particular Haboob, HERE'S A LINK

And if you want to know about Haboobs in general, what causes them, where you will likely encounter them, and more, HERE'S THE LINK