Haboob?

Really? A Haboob? That’s what it’s called? I call it a disgusting dust storm that made my throat hurt and got dirt all over my car and my house. I think the keyboard feels a bit gritty as I write this…

So on Tuesday night, Micah and I experienced our first true desert dust storm. Supposedly, this was the worst storm the Valley has seen in decades. I have heard about these storms before from my mom, but I never paid much attention to the details. Randomly enough, I overhead a conversation about dust storms a day or two before ours happened. I can’t really recall anything from the conversation, but when I walked outside two nights ago to take out the garbage and hop in my car to head to the coffee shop, I instantly thought, “so THIS is a dust storm.” Lets’s just say the garbage bag got left at the bottom of our apartment stairs and I quickly decided against a trip to the coffee shop as I ran back into the house while choking on dirt…

But even though my throat was full of dust all last night, my living room/car/patio need a good cleaning, and the ground outside looks worse than old dirty snow at the end of winter… I must say this dust storm was quite fascinating. Micah was actually driving my car to the car wash of all places when he saw the storm rolling in. He said it was crazy looking, but since he didn’t know what it was, he proceeded through the car wash and came out into the middle of a dust storm… let’s the say the water from the car wash combined with the dust has ironically put me in competition for the dirtiest car in Phoenix right now.

Here are some pictures I took last night during the storm. A blogger isn’t afraid of some dust (actually I had to rescue my bread that I left to rise out on our patio – bread making Arizona style – so I figured I would snap a few pics). Sorry, these photos are not edited, but I just couldn’t bring myself to take the time to edit pictures of dirt. I’m sure you understand…

By the way, we got a new hummingbird feeder. I wonder if the birds will still like it now that it’s covered in filth.

My bread. I saved it!

 And here are some pics of the aftermath…

See? Dirtiest car in Phoenix.

This is what happens when your car door gets opened during a dust storm.

Ewwww. How do you get this cleaned up?

I tried to get my car washed today, but everybody had the same idea. The line at the car wash must have had at least 20 cars in it at 11am on a workday! I decided the wash could wait, but I almost could not escape the parking lot because there were so many cars wrapped around the whole lot and practically spilling out into the road.

Just a glimpse of the car wash line… maybe tomorrow?

Oh well, I’m pretty sure there is still a little dust in the air anyway that would probably make it dirty again instantly…

Well, haboob (that’s really it’s scientific name!), it was nice (interesting?) to meet you, but I wouldn’t care if you never came around again….

This is what it looked like from above. Oh. My. Gosh.