Of all the growing number of special moments around desert storms, this quickly became among the top few. After observing early- to mid-afternoon thunderstorms in the borderlands southeast of Tucson, a haboob gathered from their collective outflow and churned westward, building more storms and adding more outflow. Some of that iterative process of storm formation and propagation raised this narrow shelf cloud into the setting sun’s light, and atop a broad area of leftover dust. The bright light in the cumuliform elements atop the shelf reflected again off the cloud deck above, creating a ghostly aura that accentuated the strangeness of the scene. In my experience, a directly frontlit arcus at sunset is rare, for it must involve substantially westward storm motion without obscuration or filtering of sunshine. Here it was, therefore: a fantastic scene of fluid brilliance.
2 ENE Three Points AZ (10 Jul 21) Looking S
32.0972, -111.2618