Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/07/24/watch-a-massive-haboob-engulf.html
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We don’t have those where I live. What does the back end look like? Is there a clean trailing edge, and the sun comes out and there’s a sand-rainbow, or is it a gradual dissipation that takes hours for everything to settle?
What is the plural of haboob?
Haboobies, I hope.
I thought it was like a ha’penny. So two haboobs would be one complete boob.
My Arabic dictionary is not to hand, but it’s probably something like haba’ib, or maybe haboobiin
If that’s the one that knocked my power out for 6 hours a few weeks back, I hope someone catches it.
In my experience, it’s somewhere in the middle. It doesn’t just end and everything’s still, so much as the wind gradually dies down, may pick up a bit and trail off a couple times, and then drops off, usually within 10-20 minutes of the big hit.
That said, my experience is big, but not THAT big of a sandstorm several times farther north in Arizona. Definitely remember bracing gates and such though to avoid damage.
Note to haboob filmers, let us sit for a moment in the dark shadow cast by the massive haboob.
They trail off into a thinner clout of dust and it dies down gradually.
Rarely they are followed by totally awesome thunderstorms.
Had those around the border Niger/Mali. Having a car with AC and a solid spot of slightly elevated earth was my main concern at the moment, but in hindsight, yes, it was totally awesome.
Just FTR, @aaooeeie, in West Africa, at the start of the Harmattan, a massive wall like this can be the beginning of a month or three of strange slightly brownish light. The dust thins, and you only notice that it’s still there when you have a view. (Which is quite difficult. Flatlands…)
Yes, it is called side-haboob.
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