Talk:Haboob

Use in North America

Removed claim that southwestern US haboobs are incorrectly classified as such. Please see the American Meterological Society's glossary listing for "haboob" -- as you can see, there are no geographical constraints to the definition of the term; the term merely describes a type of weather phenomenon, i.e., a large dust or sandstorm produced by the outflow of an outflow-dominant thunderstorm. Digicana 20:38, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

The entry cited seems to have updated to reflect geographic constraint: "A strong wind and sandstorm or duststorm in northern and central Sudan, especially around Khartoum." AMS glossary definition of haboob The word now is in common use by media in the Desert Southwest; perhaps someone can trace this development? Lthanlon (talk) 18:12, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

i wold like to suggest that simply because media uses a term incorrectly does not mean that Wikipedia should. (an example is the media calling all of phoenix a valley instead of a bowl, or the media incorrectly and often referring to Apache helicopters as Black Hawks, or saying that Barack Obama has taken more vacation days than his predecessor) From experience, i can say there is a difference between severity of Middle Eastern/African Haboobs and North American dust storms. And although the media uses the word Haboob for North American dust storms, it is not without controversy as can be displayed here in a New York Times article (non-subscription excerpt at this link with link to actual pay-to-view article)

SOLUTION- i suggest removing the North American reference from the Wikipedia DEFINITION section and instead placing a footnote about the controversy of the word usage when referring to North American Dust Storms. This should satisfy both sides of the argument by saying "yes the word is used, but with controversy and without matching AMS definition"

(i apologize for being long winded) 70.190.14.184 (talk) 12:07, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Don't apologize for being long winded (was that a pun?) as you weren't. There i a danger here that haboob will become a synonym for dust storm. Is there anything wrong with the term "dust storm"? I don't think so. An unnecessary new word that unlike a Latin or Greek word does not even have the advantage of being easily converted into an adjective, is a complete waste of time and brain space. And if it does become a commonly used synonym for 'dust storm' it sets a precedent at Wikipedia and beyond, for the same to happen with snow storm, or even snow or storm and many other words. Tsunami has largely replace tidal wave to the benifit of who? Wikipedia has tremendous power which it should not abuse. General Student 21 (talk) 17:47, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

PBS felt it important to clarify the difference, but over the past five months there now have been reports of haboobs, making sure to distinguish the two.-- OsirisV (talk) 13:59, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Small boat image and potential improvements

The small boat image used in the North Africa section seems unrelated to the contents of the article apart from the fact that it was taken in North Africa. Unless the image is taken during a haboob (in which case, its description should be updated), does this image really contribute or relate to the article? If not, it should probably be removed. Also, an improvement I see could be adding more related images, similar to how other weather articles (such as Tornado, Winter storm, and Dust devil) have multiple related images of their conditions.

These are just some potential ideas I had. TealWingGreen (talk) 04:25, 24 June 2022 (UTC)