Many people saw the images of the haboob in Phoenix from last week. A haboob looks ominous. It’s a massive dust storm that blows in, shrouds a region in darkness and leaves dust and dirt in its wake.

You might be surprised to learn that a haboob is not really any different than downburst or microburst storm we see in the Midwest. The difference is that these form in the arid southwest and push outward and upward lots of dust and dirt over areas that haven’t seen any real rainfall in months.

They are quite common in many desert regions that enter into monsoon seasons. There's a debate as to whether the southwest U.S. monsoon is a true monsoon compared to India and southeast Asia, but most of the features are indeed the same.

The southwestern U.S. monsoon typically develops late summer in

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