Wait Until the Haboob Settles

You've heard the metaphor “wait until the dust settles.”  A few nights ago I found out just how long it can take for dust to settle, and word to the wise, the more dust, the longer it takes.

Following a winter and spring of very little rain, strong monsoon winds have been whipping the Sonoran Desert into a frenzy, creating enormous clouds of dust that move swiftly and choke and coat everything in their path. 

While these Arizona dust storms used to be referred to simply as “dust storms,” in recent years I have noticed news sources referring to them using the Arabic word, “haboob.” 

“Haboob” may be a funny sounding word, but there is nothing funny about them.  OxfordDictionaries.com defines “haboob” as a “violent and oppressive wind blowing in the summer, especially in the Sudan, bringing sand from the desert.”  (Someone should notify Oxford Dictionaries the Arabic word has spread to the Sonoran.) 

For more detailed information about haboobs, you can find several YouTube videos and websites that depict and describe them, such as this one: http://earthsky.org/earth/amazing-video-and-pictures-of-arizona-dust-storms.

Now, back to my own recent haboob encounter. 

We had just eaten, used the bathroom, and filled our gas tank. I was thankful for this when the haboob crossed our path on I-8 as we made our way home from San Diego to Phoenix.

From a distance it was difficult to tell its expanse. My husband and I debated whether to pull off the road and wait for it to pass (not knowing how long that would take) or head toward it and hope for the best.  Our last stop had been an hour before, and we now faced an open expanse of desert with no immediate exit in sight.  With three kids in the car logging nearly four hours of car-riding crankiness, it was tempting just to keep going.  

My husband drove toward the cloud of dust, getting as close as he could with clear visibility.  Meanwhile, I madly searched my Twitter feed for information about the dust storm's size and direction. The weather service issued a dust storm warning until 6:00 p.m., yet here we were, at 7:00 p.m. facing it.  Was it dissipating, then?  The information was vague.

What we knew was what we saw - and that was a massive wall of dust we were about to hit. 

We cautiously entered into it to determine visibility.  Right away we could see the cars in front of us disappear dangerously into the dust not more than a few feet ahead. My husband, a personal injury lawyer who has first-hand knowledge of the danger of driving in a dust storm, knew what we had to do.  Suddenly, putting up with the cranky kids on the side of the road didn't sound too bad.

We pulled off the highway, turned off the car and lights, and began to wait it out. 

The wind whipped and whistled over us and a thick cloud of reddish brown dust encompassed our car, blocking out the normal earthly views of the desert, as if a spaceship had picked us up and plopped us down on Mars.

Since my own Twitter quest for information had come up vague and limited, I tweeted my photo “Inside the dust storm on highway 8 right now #haboob @ArizonaDOT @azcentral” in an attempt to give others an idea of what they or their loved ones might be in for if traveling that way. 

Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) promptly replied, “You are in a good place to stop.  Be safe…” confirming that we had made the right decision to pull over.  (For more information about dust storm safety, ADOT’s  “Safety in a Storm” page can be found here: http://www.azdot.gov/ccpartnerships/haboob/safety.asp as well as www.pullasidestayalive.org.)

The kids were both frightened and exhilarated by the experience.  I thank God they were old enough to communicate about what was happening so we could calm their fears, and we were not trapped in the car with an infant or toddler.  I was further triumphant in knowing all of my kids had recently used the bathroom.  The woman in the car in front of us did not appear to be so lucky.  We watched her brave the dust to carry her child into the desert, shielding her child’s anguished face and eyes along the way, and disappear behind a bush. 

Even with our minor victories, the wait seemed endless.  In the end, we waited just under an hour, only rejoining the highway when the dust morphed from evil red to smoky gray with several feet of visibility in front of us.  Luckily the storm headed south while we drove east.  We made it home safely.  I tweeted my thanks to ADOT for caring.

If this haboob was blown my family's way to teach a life lesson in patience, then this story will serve as our reminder to pause in the face of life’s haboobs, determine the quantity of metaphoric dust, then let it settle long enough for the path to become clear.  Sometimes life gets uncomfortable, but in the end, the storm passes.