The July 5, 2011, haboob over Phoenix. Photo by Haboob Daniel Bryant.
I know that I promised a brief vacay for the blog and me. But I couldn’t resist sharing an important anniversary.
No, it’s not legal in the least. But that’s the beauty of Change of Venue Friday, when we get to exercise multiple parts of our brains.
And on top of that, who’s reading blogs today anyway? Everybody’s by the pool eating grilled meats, aren’t they? (Except for those of us at our work desks, licking our injustice wounds by reading blogs and watching Youtube videos).
Well, you can join in the workplace fun, as we recall the massive dust storm—a haboob—that engulfed Phoenix on July 5, 2011.
Yes, your flight’s delayed. Haboob at Sky Harbor Airport.
First, here is a scientific explanation of why the 2001 dust storm was so large.
Searching around Youtube for haboob video is kind of fun (but be sure to include the “ha,” at least at work). It’s amazing how much video of the event was shot and shared around the world. Finally, our state was famous for something unrelated to policy choices!
Here is a great video piece posted by the photographer Mike Olbinski (you can see more of his work here).
It is his ground-based time-lapse video as the haboob sweeps into downtown Phoenix on July 5.
The second video is an aggregation of shots from around Phoenix.
Finally, to add some news value to this post, let’s turn to a compilation of 2011 haboob coverage—or, more accurately, a mashup of TV correspondents using the word “haboob”—sometimes gleefully, other times awkwardly.
For the last bit of haboob humor on this holiday-ish Friday, I offer my shot of a sign in front of Revolver Records in downtown Phoenix; the words appeared within hours of the dust cloud passing. There’s probably no news event that cannot be translated into eye-catching commerce through the use of three exclamation marks.
That’s right. It was a haboob!!!
That’s it; I’m out. Have a great weekend!!!
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