Photo by Benjamin Leatherman

In case you're out of town, in a bomb shelter, or otherwise oblivious to the world around you, there's a bit of a storm going on in the Valley right now.

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​The National Weather Service has issued an excessive heat warning for Maricopa County, advising residents that the temperature for much of the week will be in excess of 110 degrees -- which completely f***ing sucks.

The mercury hit 113 degrees today -- which is pretty hot for this time of year. In fact, it's a record -- the old record for August 22, was 111 degrees.

The bad news: it's only gonna get hotter.

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Image: @jeffgokee

Check out this and other shots from readers of last night's "jegos" on the New Times site.

Nothing against the Sudanese, but "haboob" is a dumb-sounding name to English-receiving ears. It inspires more ridicule than the awesomeness these wind-blown monsters deserve.

The news media has been using the word more often in the last few years, and the Grand Haboob that blew into town on July 5 made it a household term. For weather buffs, though, it's not a new term -- a few seconds in Google News Archives shows that newspapers have used the word to describe the phenomena in Arizona and elsewhere for decades. A 1981 Milwaukee Journal article about the failed rescue of American hostages in Iran referred to a "haboob" that enveloped helicopters.

In part because of our consternation with "haboob," we wanted to know what the people who lived in this part of the world long before the arrival of Europeans called these things.

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Phoenix New Times

All it takes is a little dust to get Valley media outlets in a tizzy.

​Last night's Haboob wasn't quite as spectacular as the one that swept through the Valley earlier this month, but that didn't stop local media outlets from turning their respective websites into Haboob-central as soon as the storm hit.

The July 5, storm was described by experts from the National Weather Service as one of the most "significant" they'd ever seen. It towered over the Valley at heights of up to 6,000 feet.

Last night's storm wasn't quite as impressive, reaching heights of about 4,000 feet -- but that didn't stop local media from going wild, filling their websites with reader photos and accounts of the storm. ABC 15 even ran a story about the history of the word "Haboob."

It might seem like overkill to get so worked up over the desert's B-squad of dust storms -- considering how incredible the last storm was -- but there's a reason: Haboobs equal web hits are friggin awesome.

See our own collection of reader photos here. See the homepages of some Valley media outlets, as they appeared when the Haboob hit, after the jump.
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Image: YouTube

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An ongoing drought in the southeastern part of Arizona, which has seen little rainfall in recent months, made last night's dust storm "exceptional," an official with the National Weather Service says.

"This came from a thunderstorm complex not far from Tucson," says Phoenix NWS meteorologist Ken Waters. "That area hasn't had a lot of rain for some months now."

As we mentioned in last night's post, the wall of dust that hit the Valley at roughly 7:30 p.m. was, well, extra-dusty. Internet users and news watchers around the world heard of the haboob as pictures and videos of the event went viral. If you're hungry for more dust-storm footage, check out our collection of pictures and videos.

"The magnitude was the main thing," Waters adds. "This really was extreme. The height was 5,000 to 8,000 feet above ground level, and ran from about 150 miles to 200 miles. It was a pretty amazing event."
 


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Image: Shannon Armour

The leading edge of a massive dust storm that hit the Valley approaches Interstate 10 at about 7:20 p.m., near Riggs Road.

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Not in Phoenix it doesn't.

​What did you do this weekend? Go to the park? Go hiking? A little golf? Whatever you did, it was probably vastly different from what people on the East Coast had going on.

As a lot of the country was snowed in for much of the weekend, to the point that snow collapsed the roof of the Minnesota Vikings football stadium, the Valley made history with record-setting temperatures that can be simply described as perfect.





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​There's no denying that hail storms are cool...when you're in one. Reading about hail isn't quite as exciting.

That's not stopping local TV news stations from filling their Web sites with stories about hail.

As you're probably aware, it hailed today. Local TV news stations seem to think it's the apocalypse.

The top three headlines on ABC 15's Web site right now are "Now: Heavy Rain Moves into Phoenix Area," "PHOTOS! Hail Hits the Valley," and "Flooding, Fire, Hail Hits the Valley."

KPHO also found today's weather relevant enough to warrant three stories. Those headlines, each featured at the top of the page, include "Hail Piles Up in North Phoenix," "Water Puddles Develop in North Phoenix," and "Rain Storm in North Phoenix."

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​This is Groundhog Day, and Pennsylvania's most famous marmot emerged from his hole in Punxsutawney this morning to see his shadow, which, of course, means there will be six more weeks of winter.

Normally we would rely on morning shows like Good Morning America to broadcast Phil's findings, but this year the groundhog took his message mainstream -- he "tweets."

"Eek! A horrifying shadow! I'm going back to bed," Punxsutawney Phil "writes" on his Twitter page. "Guess that's 6 more weeks of winter, chumps!"

Joke's on you, Phil, you're only a "chump" if you don't live in Phoenix.

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Last week's wet weather turned the west end of the Tempe Town Lake into a wide, rumbling waterfall over the weekend as runoff spilled over the lake's inflatable dams.

 

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Tempe closed the lake and let air out of the rubber dams on Friday as billions of gallons of muddy rainwater churned down the Salt River bed. The first picture here was taken on Saturday; the waterfall seemed just as intense when we snapped the second picture yesterday. (Both taken with our mobile-phone camera).

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