Skip to main content

Dust Devils, Bunnies, and Haboobs

Back East, this time of year is mud season. I bid it a fond farewell 10 years ago.  Mud is rarely an issue here, but it's red and sticky when it does occur. Not good at all.  Spring is the harbinger of dust season in Arizona. There's dust year around, but especially so in March and April. The winds kick up and red grit sifts through cracks and crevices. You'll find it in the house right after you've dusted. If you're an OCD duster--look out. The dust never ends. After a little more than 24 hours of 40-50 mile an hour winds last week which really coated everything with red dirt, it's calmed down to just breezy. While the windstorm was bullying its way across the state, a wall of dirt rose in the air, veiling the mountains to the east of Casa Wallace. 
Haboob near Phoenix

Dust Devil
Larger dust storms or haboobs occur regularly toward Phoenix, especially on the I-10.  They're as dangerous as a blizzard, and maybe more so because people don't know how to drive in such severe conditions here. There have been many multi-vehicle pileups on the I-10 that have cost more than a few lives. Dust causes zero visibility just like snow, so if you see it coming, discretion is called for. Get off at the nearest exit, find a restaurant, and sit a spell. It beats getting creamed in the constant flow of truck traffic.

We most often experience dust devils which are mini tornadoes. They plow through your yard and rearrange patio furniture, garbage cans, and tear your roses apart. I've been caught in a couple and ended up with grit  everywhere. A shower is immediately in order. They're not nearly as powerful as a tornado, but they are a nuisance. Because of the air heating up and the dry conditions, these whirling dirt throwers show up until the monsoons hit. When we actually have some humidity, the devils disappear. 

There are scientific explanations of the weather patterns that cause these wind events, but I won't bore you with the details. The bottom line is that every area has its own ugly weather, and ours involves wind and dust rather than wind and snow. So, I'll keep collecting cushions in the courtyard and putting them back on the patio furniture until rain arrives.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Castile Knapper

It's always fun to have family members who have a bit of notoriety because of interesting pursuits. My husband's cousin, Ken Wallace is one of those.  Ken is an artist who works in stone as a flintknapper. Flintknapping is the ancient art of shaping tools and weapons from pieces of stone. Knapping was part of the survival skill set of Native Americans. Arrowheads, knives, hatchets, and more were shaped from raw pieces of flint or chert.  Ken knapping at the Wallace Reunion Ken became interested in this process back in 1985. One of his favorite pastimes was searching fields for arrowheads, both of which are pretty plentiful in Western New York. Freshly plowed ground in rural areas often yields many different types of arrowheads since the Iroquois were the original residents of what are now corn fields and cow pastures. Fascinated with how the Iroquois made their weapons and tools, Ken started to try and recreate them. He says a lot of trial and error were involved in the...
1 comment
Read more

Victim of Circumstances?

 The article below has been getting a lot of hits lately, and I thought it may be time to repost it. A couple of weeks ago, I took the picture below. I thought it pretty much sums up our life journey. We never know what's around the corner for us.  Circumstances change in seconds some days. Whether the circumstances of life are good or bad, we're fond of blaming them for how we behave and think. Here are a few of the well-used excuses:  "I'm a victim of circumstances.""The situation is impossible." "The circumstances are beyond my control." "Under the circumstances"...fill in the blank. Funny how principles, self-control, and  positive thinking can go out the window when we're "under the circumstances."  And lest you think the author is above blaming circumstances, she is not. I've used most of the excuses above, whether spoken or unspoken.  An imprisoned and wrongly accused Jewish C...
1 comment
Read more

Smores Anyone?

We lived in the same house for 25 years just outside of our small hometown of Castile. It was a good little neighborhood and was mostly quiet except for the traffic on Route 39. When the signs of spring arrived, it was also time to pile up tree branches, and clean out the garage or the shed of burnable miscellany. Each year there seemed to be a contest between my husband and the next door neighbor to assemble a burn pile of enormous proportions.  Day after day I watched their piles grow until tepee-shaped woodpiles were just right to be torched. There was an art to the arrangement so that it would be totally consumed in a short amount of time. It was sort of like a bonfire on steroids. Now the neighbor enjoyed the element of surprise on the neighborhood and waited for quiet Saturday afternoons to begin his incendiary activity. KABOOM! You would have thought we were under attack by enemy forces. Then there was a rush of wind and the crackling of the k...
2 comments
Read more