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Why Haboobs Happen

Photo by Perth Weather Live

Photo from blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com
Those are haboobs: dust storms caused by strong winds.  

The term, "haboob" is Arabic, and I don't know how it came to be used in the west, but I will guess that its use is one of the by-products of war, and veterans returning.  

When I first went to Alaska, as a kid, to go halibut fishing, I was struck with the names along the Northwest Coast and beyond:  The Strait of Juan de Fuca, or Cordova (Puerto de Cordova), for instance.  And there were Russian names, and English names.  All of the explorers left names familiar to them on our maps.  Veterans returning from the Spanish-American War brought Spanish names to baptize small towns in Iowa.  There is even a Norway, Iowa.  And now we have haboobs.

Climate change--which is not real, you know:  perfectly respectable politicians say so--has produced fierce dust storms in Australia, too, and one of their storms blew out to sea.  Can you imagine how beautiful it would have been had there really been global warming?  

Haboob.  Haboob!  Say it a time or two.  But not too often! You don't want to catch a Semitic religion, unless it is Judaism, or Christianity.  

It is the principle of the Camel's nose under the edge of the tent.  If he gets his nose there, pretty soon you have a whole camel in your tent.  It is also known as The Wedge Principle.  You know:  "If we allow something to happen once, pretty soon everybody will be doing it!"  

Haboobs are real.  Real wind.  Real dust.  Wedge Principle arguments are like religion:  you have to be a believer, and if you are a believer, you can say just about anything you want, however magical; that climate change is not real, for instance, and that haboobs are God's punishment for a shortage of prayers for rain, or for removing God from the schoolroom, right next to the Glock in the teacher's desk.  

 We will get through this, by affirming it.


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