Haboob!

So I guess you all have heard about this "haboob" thing that has put us on the national news lately, right?

A haboob is an Arabic term that refers to a strong and sudden sandstorm, but usually you hear about them popping up in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, not Arizona. But I suppose it is in keeping with the very strange weather this year all across the world that Phoenix has had not one, but two haboobs move through the city in the past month.

Phoenix's weather in late July and August is always somewhat wacky. We call it "monsoon season," where the blistering hot temperatures of June and July collide with rising humidity to create freak, occasionally violent thunderstorms. On the one hand, we in Phoenix enjoy having a bit of rain to break the monotony of so many weeks of sunshine and heat. On the other, though, monsoon storms rarely bring any relief with them. Strong winds are more like giant hair dryers than cooling breezes, the giant monsoon raindrops feel like a teapot full of boiling water is exploding on you, and the feeling of general mayhem in the air makes you want to stay safely enclosed in whatever container you can find - a house, a car, maybe even a Dumpster.

As I was pulling out of my parking space on Monday after work wrapped up, I could see over the parking garage roof a couple of clouds beginning to form in what was otherwise a blindingly bright sky. The brilliant turquoise of the afternoon sky dulled as I looked east into a flat blue-gray. That's when I knew I needed to hotfoot it home - as a seasoned Phoenician, I knew that these signs meant a monsoon storm was about half an hour out.

Sure enough, by the time I got home, the sky to the east was brown and the winds were already kicking up. Rain had begun to fall, the drops so large that you could see them streaming down to the ground in thick strands - but the water was so warm that the drop marks faded quickly when they hit the sidewalks. Then the haboob hit, and it was like a scene out of Lawrence of Arabia or something.

After the first haboob, the night air had been thick like a New England fog, only brown-colored. This haboob, thankfully, blew through and left a more or less clear sky. Sadly, we couldn't say the same about our lawn or our pool - the latter of which was turned to a murky greenish brown. Ugh.

The nice thing about haboobs is that they don't stick around like the blizzards our compatriots in Downers Grove have to live with every winter. Still, those beautiful photos they sent us of Lakeshore Drive covered in pristine white snow certainly look prettier than the ones we have of our haboobs - like a scene out of Independence Day, only caramel-colored.

A haboob is a small price to pay for the weather we enjoy the other eight months of the year. Still, it'd be nice to be nationally famous for something besides a big dirt cloud.