No More Weather
After the great Haboob of 2011 the hot weather isn't news anymore. The dust is the news. It's everywhere.
The next day is cooled to 107. There was a 1mm layer of dust on every surface in the city and suburbs, a 50 X 150 mile swath in the desert. They say this was a once in 40 years event. There is still a brown fog over the basin. Air traffic was limited 24 hours after the storm. Auto traffic kicks up the dust, everywhere you go there's brown in the air, a low haze 6 feet off the ground, the same dust flying as each dirty cars passes.
Our screen porch let a lot of dust in, none out. I spent the day after cleaning the pool. Cheryl womaned the broom. After an hour outdoors in the sun cleaning dust, I felt sick. Last night I had a very sore throat, I felt feverish. My sinuses were a mess. People all over the valley are having respiratory issues.
The news was the hot weather and then the haboob came along. The first question people asked was, "What the fuck is a haboob?" Native Arizonans, some quite old, had never heard the word before. It was a new word in a land known for dust storms. The word is Arabic for, guess what? .... dust storm .... but there's a phenomena behind this type of storm.
Extremely hot air trapped in our sweltering valley mixes with high altitude cold moist air, the makings of a monsoon and thunderstorms. Heat rises. The cold air rushes to the surface at 60-70 mph, straight down. When it hits the hot dry earth it creates an upside down mushroom cloud of desert dust, sand and debris. I spreads at 50-60 mph for as long as the energy lasts. In this case 150 miles of travel. The dust cloud was more than 5000 feet high, 50 miles wide. Fives were wild.
Some lady on a local comment board, username Cleopatra, informed her fellow news consumers the word haboob is not Arabic. "My husband, he is Arab, he never heard of the word, not from Arabia." ... Oh yeah, is he a scholarly Arabic linguist? I don't think so. Every online source of word definition says the origin is Arabic.
A Mexican in the group tried to steal the word, claiming it was Spanish. He was rightly corrected and ridiculed. The O's look like hubcaps, he couldn't help it.
So the haboob was such a weather event there's no reason to write about the hot summer anymore. Between wildfires, 118-F, monsoons and haboob, we've had a busy weather season. The rest is just a continuation of summer.
We still don't know why someone started using the word haboob here, in Redneck, USA.
The pool will reopen Friday.