Weater (for Weather)

A haboob was visited upon Phoenix, Arizona, recently, and if you aren't familiar with that marvelous Arabic word, it means "strong wind" or "phenomenon" and refers to a sandstorm (or dust storm), something that troubles the Middle East a lot more often than it does the United States. I once visited a local museum with a very young relative who I found at one point stalled on a marble bench with a bemused expression on his face. He'd been staring at a painting and wondering about the caption. "What," he inquired intently as I came back around the corner, "is a dust bowl again?" He was probably picturing his cereal bowl at home gathering dust instead of Wheaties, which really didn't match what he was seeing on the wall. It's hard to imagine seeing much of anything at all while in the midst of a haboob, but the Arizona drivers I saw on TV seemed to be almost taking it in stride. Whether or not that's true, it takes all kinds of weather to make the world go 'round. There were seven instances of today's typo in OhioLINK and 56 in WorldCat.

(Dust storm approaching Stratford, Texas, April 18, 1935, from the NOAA George E. Marsh Album, and Wikipedia.)

Carol Reid