blaine finally makes out the faint red lights of cars paralyzed when the massive haboob extinguished the street lights. everybody else seems to be hiding out, too. it s crazy. this sudden darkness is the most perilous aspect of the storm, one that can result in deadly accidents on the road. the primary danger that these people are going to experience is the rapid loss of this ability, particularly if you re in any kind of a vehicle, like car, a plane, what have you. you run the risk of crashing that vehicle because you simply cannot see what is in front of you. and this large, dense haboob spares no square inch of ground in its path. this time lapse by photographer michael binski shows a different angle. from this spot near the heart of the city, you can see the storm roll right over the phoenix skyline, including a busy i-10 in the foreground. but just before the haboob
of the end of the world because it s this rusty, brown color that envelops you. blaine finally makes out the faint red lights of cars paralyzed when the massive haboob extinguished the street lights. everybody else seems to be hiding out, too. getting crazy. this sudden darkness is the most perilous aspect of the storm, one that can result in deadly accidents on the road. the primary danger that these people are going to experience is the rapid loss of this ability, particularly if you re in any kind of a vehicle, like car, a plane, what have you. you run the risk of crashing that vehicle because you simply cannot see what is in front of you. and this large, dense haboob stares no square inch of ground in its path. this time lapse by photographer michael binski shows a different angle. from this spot near the heart of the city, you can see the storm roll right over the phoenix
veteran storm chaser and videographer blain sees this perfect storm as a perfect photo op. i get a phone call, get your camera, i don t care what you re doing, get out to the nearest hill you can. as soon as i got to the nearest over pass i saw this thing coming in. they see haboobs several times a year, but this one is special. it was extensive in both how big it was, it stretched for more than 90 miles. how tall it was. it was more than a mile high, according to some reports, but most importantly, it was an incredibly dense storm. it was look a wall of dust, actually, enveloping you. blaine is seven miles away on an overlook and and the massive cloud, shown here in time lapse, takes up almost his entire field of vision. as soon as i m up the hill, i m oust breath, i got my tripod, i took a step back to see the scale of this thing. look at the size of this thing.
oh yeah! blaine watches in awe as the gargantuan with storm swallows up south phoenix. watch how fast it s coming. watch it engulf that light right here. should be here in, oh, probably less than four minutes. that s my guess. and over here we ve got people playing softball. they don t even know it s about to hit them. warnings have gone out on tv and radio, but many phoenix residents remain unaware of the approaching behemoth. the storm was so wide, so tall, you could literally see airplanes trying to get out of the storm s path. the colossal cloud moves with surprising speed and within 2 1/2 minutes the edge of the storm reaches blaine s location in tempe. here it comes. it rolled in way quicker than i thought it was going to.
day turns to night in an instant. when it rolled in, it immediately went pitch black. you couldn t see your hand in front of your face. this is incredible. that s the park we were just looking at. it kind of hits just like this huge wall of wind and you re also getting sand blasted at the same time. dust and sand swirling around you and getting in your teeth and getting in your eyes. you could hardly hold your eyes open. well, i think we got the shot and we ll live to shoot another day. my next thing was trying to get to safety. get to lower ground. but the task proves impossible. blaine can t find his car. this is probably can t even see. it really becomes black as night. you get a sense that it s kind