The Big Haboob

You may have seen this on the national news, but we got to live it. While a lot of the country has been experiencing tornadoes, snow storms, or floods - we had a haboob come through on Tuesday evening. If you don't know what a haboob is, that's ok. It is just a questionably objectionable term for a big dust storm.

We were out in our pool swimming. I (Tye) got up to jump off the rocks into the pool when I looked south. I froze with both awe and a little fear as I saw a huge wave of dust rolling towards us. It looked something like a wave rolling onto the beach, except that it was about a mile high and 50 miles wide and was moving about 50 mph. You could see it rolling along swallowing up houses and neighborhoods as it went.

Needless to say, we quickly cleaned up our toys and got in the house quickly. Once it hit us, it went from day to very dark in an instant as the dust enveloped our house. We get these once or twice a year, but this was an exceptionally large haboob. And yes, the radio guys have a lot of fun with the term haboob when they are giving the news.

I was just informed that Allison warned us about the dust storm. As usual, we both ignored her and claimed we never heard her. Here in writing - Allison was right. Below is Allison's footage out the window after it hit.

The next day, everything was coated with a layer of dust and dirt and it took a little while to get the pool clean. Other than that, and a few leaning tomato plants in the garden and a landscape light that decided to move across the street to the neighbors yard, we suffered no damage.