Watch a massive haboob engulf southern Arizona towns

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?

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What is the plural of haboob?

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Haboobies, I hope.

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I thought it was like a ha’penny. So two haboobs would be one complete boob.

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My Arabic dictionary is not to hand, but it’s probably something like haba’ib, or maybe haboobiin

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If that’s the one that knocked my power out for 6 hours a few weeks back, I hope someone catches it. :rage:

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Wait, did you say massive…?

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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.

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Note to haboob filmers, let us sit for a moment in the dark shadow cast by the massive haboob.

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They trail off into a thinner clout of dust and it dies down gradually.

Rarely they are followed by totally awesome thunderstorms.

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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…)

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Yes, it is called side-haboob.

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