Big Haboobies: A Short History of Sandstorms

How often do you think about sandstorms? Not as often as you should, is the answer. Sandstorms have been fucking with people since the dawn of time and even if you are currently reading this while in a sandstorm, there’s still a lot you should know about them.

Firstly, there are a couple of different names for sandstorms, one of the best ones being “haboob” its Arabic form. Secondly, many regions of the world are susceptible to them; not only the Middle East, but North America, all of Asia, and Australia have all been rocked by what is essentially a giant evil blanket of dust, or a tornado turned inside-out.

Here are a few notable sandstorms out of many throughout history;

Australia, September 22nd, 2009.  

This one was cool because it made Australia look like another planet for an entire week. All of the photos documenting the sandstorm look like they were Photoshop’d by someone who is severely color blind. The entire southern continent was painted orange-red, but people still tried to go about their day as if 5 million tonnes of dust wasn’t blowing through their face/respiratory system. In short, one time Australia got her sand period.

Sand periods!

Pakistan, July 4th, 2007.  

Pakistan got raped by God on this day. First a sandstorm swept through the nation and debilitated everyone with its hazy, blinding sheets of sand. Everyone figured it’d be over within a day. Guess again. It poured relentlessly for days, displacing homes and full out flooding people to death. Temperatures ranged from 131 F during the day, to 30 F at night. 200 people died understandably. Then time went on and nobody gave a shit. FOOLISH. Keep this event in mind when you stop believing in nature/the apocalypse/your own insignificance.

Satelite view of the sandstorm that shit on Pakistan.

North America, like all of 1930-35.

Farmers were super bummed about this one. During pretty much all of the 1930s North American regions from New Mexico to Saskatchewan saw sandstorms attack the shit out of them just in time for a short vacation before World War II. This was known as “The Dustbowl” and it struck right around the time of the Great Depression, like a second kick in the balls to everyone who was poor. Ask your elderly friends about it, they’ll probably have something remotely interesting to say. To give you an idea of how exhausting and annoying this must have been: winds reached up to 60 mph, and it lasted for basically FIVE YEARS.

400 CE China

Not too much is known about this one because it’s ancient and shit, but it is believed that the sandstorm was so brutal it completely buried and preserved this particular region of Western China. It is actually referred to as “Pompeii of the Silk Road.” Also interesting to note: they found white people mummified by this particular sandstorm. Maybe the sandstorm actually picked them up in Europe and dropped them off in China. Totally plausible.

White people mummies on the silk road?

524 BCE Egypt

The Persian King, Cambyses II, and his entire army of 50,000 men apparently drowned in a giant sandstorm during his quest to destroy some oracle out of vengeance (fucking cool.) Perhaps history would have been written with dramatic differences if Cambyses II had not been so viciously and randomly attacked by nature. Perhaps this was so long ago that it actually doesn’t matter at all. Regardless, 50,000 soldiers dying from grains of sand sounds kind of pussy.

Some ancient cartoonist drew this shitty picture.