For just a fleeting moment, a shaft of the day’s last sunlight streamed through a gap in clouds to the west, shining directly onto the apex of a haboob. Blasting westward through the Tucson metro area, this outflow-driven slab of dust made a miserable experience for anyone caught outside, with its choking grit and hazardously low visibility. Out here, it offered a beautiful spectacle as the sunset on dense dust yielded a coral, pink-orange fluid form. This place and time was doubly amazing, for on the other side of the highway, another section of sunlight brilliantly illuminated a high-based arcus, above a different part of the same haboob. A day that started with a beautiful weak supercell and some hail was peaking at sunset with highly colorful dust and outflow. The very next day, I would experience another spectacular haboob, but around Las Cruces, NM.
2 ENE Three Points AZ (10 Jul 21) Looking S
32.0977, -111.2616