“Dust Devils” & “Haboobs”
One of the earliest descriptions of this phenomenon was written by Tombstone minerGeorge Parsons on March 20, 1880: “…saw a singular sight today. Looking skyward was a spiral column of great length of dust and dirt, suspended bodily by the wind and held sometime before it descended.”
Dust devils are most common when the air temperature is in the seventy’s and eighty’s with a sustained wind of eight to twelve MPH and generally occur between 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. These “Devil Winds” as the Native Americans called them, always travel across the ground in the same direction and speed of the prevailing wind. Most last one to three minutes, with some ten to fifteen minutes, however extremely large dust devils may last for one hour. The vertical column of dust is easily seen and may rise two thousand feet above the ground, while the thermal column of air that causes the dust devil, may rise another ten thousand feet above the dust column. It has been found that one half of all dust devils rotate clockwise while the other half rotates counter-clockwise. Both the horizontal and vertical winds contained in a dust devil average twenty to forty MPH but can be much stronger and are capable of damage to property. According to Professor T. Theodore Fujita (the founder of the Fujita scale of tornado wind velocity) of the University of Chicago, a large dust devil is stronger than twenty five percent of all the tornadoes that occur worldwide. Their dust and sand can pit automobile windshields, therefore should you see a dust devil From the California border to Junction with Highway 60 approaching the highway before you, use caution and good judgment in passing by it safely. On May 10, 1989, a large dust devil ripped the Aerostat anti-drug balloon apart near Ft. Huachuca causing one million dollars in damage. Most common in the desert, dust devils have also been seen in the summer high atop the Rocky Mountains in Colorado at elevations above twelve thousand feet.
Another desert phenomenon is the “Haboob”, a massive wall of dust twenty miles wide and three to four thousand feet in height. The speed of these “dust-storms” can exceed eighty miles per hour. The word Haboob comes from “Habb”, the Arabic word for wind. Haboobs are generally caused by “macro bursts”, large downdraft winds that scour the desert from summer thunderstorms.
Gov. George Wiley Paul Hunt Hunt was dubbed “Arizona’s Perpetual Governor” as he was elected to seven terms. The portly (5’ 9” tall, 300 lbs), mustachioed governor bore a striking resemblance to President William Howard Taft. An outstanding politician, Hunt had hundreds of note cards with the names of constituents, their spouse’s names and personal information which he tirelessly studied. When encountering one of the individuals, he could call them by name and discuss their interests with ease. Hunt was also known to buy cases of jam, remove their labels and give the jars of “home-made” jam to his constituents as a personal gift from his wife Duette. Called the “Old Roman” and “Old Walrus” by friends and foe alike, Hunt was the first governor of Arizona to use open cockpit biplanes to visit his constituency in the rural areas of Arizona. A Democrat and incumbent, Hunt lost the 1917 election to Republican Thomas E. Campbell (known as “Copper Tom” for his allegiance to copper companies) by only thirty votes. Governor Hunt contested the vote and refused to honor the election. On January 1, 1918, both men were sworn in as “Co-Governors” with Governor Campbell running his office from the kitchen of his home while the incumbent stayed at the capitol. When the legislature convened in 1918, both men gavetheir version of the state-of-the-state address to the assembled legislators. The federal government finally stepped in and named Arizona Secretary of State Sidney Osborn as acting governor until the Supreme Court a year later named Hunt the official winner. Both Campbell and Osborn were later elected Governor of Arizona without conflict. During World War II, Papago Park was the home to several hundred German Prisoners of War, of which twenty five engineered the largest P.O.W. escape in U.S. history on December 23, 1944. The group tunneled their way out of the compound, only to be later captured individually or in small groups in one of the largest man-hunts in Arizona history.
Roadrunners
Arizona would have chosen the roadrunner as the state bird in 1912 if
