Thursday, July 7, 2011

The Haboob - The Storm of July 5, 2011

AzFamily.com

What's an Haboob?  Randy Cerveny, a geophysical sciences professor at Arizona State University, explains it in this  video from Arizona State University.
 
This video is very interesting, and only takes a few minutes of your time, it's worth your time to watch it.  Before the other night I had never heard the term 'haboob'....now that's all anyone talks about.  
 
It was amazing that the temps here in Phoenix were about 100+/- a degree or two....when this storm blew through.  As we walked outside we could feel the temperatures actually dropping.  When it was over it was about 80F.  According to the news the dust cloud was 1-2 miles long and 60-100 feet high....that's a pretty big cloud!!!  The storm lasted a couple of hours (including the rain after the initial cloud) ...Sky Harbor airport was closed down. The storm started to the south of us, although I do not know exactly where.  It came through Tucson (120 south of Phoenix).
 
I would have loved to have stood out front during the storm....but hubs (and I) both knew that would not be good for us.  We could feel the dust in the air and the next day I had a migraine that I'm sure was brought on by the 2-3 minutes we did stand outside.  
 
 
Mary Post Warren
copyright 2011, all rights reserved

3 comments:

  1. Wow! Did you take the picture? I saw the coverage on TV and it was amazing to see.

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  2. Harriet - no, I did not take the picture. I have the website I borrowed it from listed just below the picture.

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  3. Never heard it called a Haboob before. We experienced one a few years ago when a wall of dust moved over our town in Nevada. It is definitely a different experience.

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