The weatherman on the local news is practically peeing himself with excitement. Tonight was our second haboob of the season. Who can blame him? After all, when the weather forecast gets reused for months on end (hot and dry), it’s sure to be a boring job. Who needs four years of college to be a meteorologist in Arizona?
In meteorological terms, a haboob is caused by the downdraft which forms at the outer edge of a thunderstorm. They look sort of like a great big tornado lying on its side, rolling across the desert. There they pick up great quantities of dirt and fling most of it onto my patio; the rest goes in the swimming pool, which resembles a Minnesota lake after the storm’s passage.
So we were standing outside watching the storm roll in and we forgot about dinner in the oven. By the time we came back in, there was so much smoke in the house we could barely see. We had to open the windows but there was a haboob out there, so while the smoke rolled out, the dust rolled in. It was complete panic for a few minutes there.
By the time we sat down to eat, the turkey pot pie was lukewarm and gritty. I don’t like haboobs.