haboob

It is Arabic for "strong wind". It came through Phoenix on tuesday night. We saw images like this one on the news and were amazed. It blew through here after dark, so we did not see the full impact of the rolling dust. All we could see was the dust in the wind. Lots and lots of dust. It was really weird. Here is a picture I copied from the internet.

It left a big mess in its path. Today, two days later we are still cleaning up. I think the pool will take a few more days to filter it all out. We had to put extra treatments in to ward off bacteria that they say will grow pretty quickly in your pool. Also, I learned that this phenomenon can cause Valley Fever. Now, that is just awful.

Here are a few photos that I took. This is the palm tree/pool view on a normal day:

Here it is after the haboob.
This is another night shot during the "storm". I did not spend much time outside for obvious reasons.
Here is the pool yesterday morning.
This is what the sky looked like for most of the day. No sign of the mountains at all.
This is the coating of dust that is on everything! I commented..."you know if this was a snowstorm it would all just melt away."
This is another one of those... "I've lived here all my life and have never seen anything like this before!" We have heard comments like that already. (Put it on the list with the gila monster sightings.) We, at least, did not lose our power as did some in Phoenix. A whole night without air conditioning after that would have been miserable. The floors inside the house had an extra layer of dust yesterday, so they got a thorough cleaning. It looks like I will need to do it again today based on the foot prints I see across the floor.

I guess we can say it is kind of cool that we experienced something that will be talked about for a long time.

Haboob.

Funny name.

Strange experience.