Haboob Hubbub: The Science of the Monster Phoenix Dust Storm

ABC15, Ohoenix ^ | 7/5/11 | ABC15

[AwesomePossum]

A haboob is a distant cousin of a hoodaub........both are related to the hobo.........

8:}

[JimSEA]

That’s the one. I was confusing it with the Poston Butte pyramid honoring Charles Poston - Father of Arizona.

[Inclines to the Right]

Maybe it’s Dutch? :)

[GOPJ]

Thankfully they haven’t tried to embrace the Australian version of a tornado, which they call “willy willy or cockeyed bob”. Which would sound incredibly stupid on the evening news.

Some in the MSM read this site - pleeeeezzze don't give them any ideas...

[okie01]

No visibility last night and today everything in covered with a think layer of dust. Tough breathing! Never seen anything like it.

Oklahoma. In the thirties and again in the fifties.

Phoenix has had them before (they have a name). And weather is cyclical.

[Jvette]

Haboob, hah, stupid name.

Dust Storm, gee, what’s so hard about that?

Not as sexy a phrase I guess.

Or are we preparing for our new masters?

[ViLaLuz]

Since when are American weather events called arabic names?

[Nuc 1.1]

Well said. Haboob is Arabic. After seeing the wave hit Japan I say the term Tidal Wave is more correct than “Harbor Wave”. The thing hits the whole coast not just the harbors and it comes in like a tide. Seems to me the term is Tidal Wave is far more accurate.

[Ellendra]

It doesn’t help that both those expressions sound like euphemisms for male organs.

And haboob sounds like a part of the female anatomy. Are they trying to find new ways of making teenage boys snicker?

[McGavin999]

These used to happen all the time. When Chandler and Gilbert were farm fields the dust storms were like that several times during the summer.

That Haboob garbage has to stop. It was a dust storm.

[Ole Okie]

We used to get some pretty good dust storms up in the panhandle of Texas when I was a kid, don’t ever remember seeing a cloud like that except in photos from the Dust Bowl back in the 30s.

I saw a number of dust storms come in during the 30's in SW Oklahoma.

And as I remember them, they looked just like the Phoenix dust storm.

We got indoors and sometimes used a wet handkerchief or bandanna to cover our faces.

[West Texas Chuck]

Interesting. I thought it looked like an old photo from Oklahoma, too.

When I was a young ‘un we got them up in the panhandle of Texas, but I never saw a wall could like that.

We had double storm windows and there would still be a little line of New Mexico red dirt on the inside sill after one of those. Got 4 or 5 of them storms every spring.

Normal (?) people don’t understand, but where I grew up the average wind speed was around 40 mph. 70-80 was common a few days in the spring, opening a car door or the front door at Alsups was a potentially dangerous event. As I recall the record was a 112 mph gust at the airport in Amarillo.

I don’t miss that part of West Texas, not a bit.

[Ole Okie]

I don’t miss that part of West Texas, not a bit.

Very few houses where we lived had weatherstripping and the dust came right in and made itself unwelcome. My dad had our house weatherstripped for that reason.