Talk:Haboob

Use in North America

Removed claim that southwestern US haboobs are incorrectly classified as such. Please see the American Meterological Society's glossary listing for "haboob" -- as you can see, there are no geographical constraints to the definition of the term; the term merely describes a type of weather phenomenon, i.e., a large dust or sandstorm produced by the outflow of an outflow-dominant thunderstorm. Digicana 20:38, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

The entry cited seems to have updated to reflect geographic constraint: "A strong wind and sandstorm or duststorm in northern and central Sudan, especially around Khartoum." AMS glossary definition of haboob The word now is in common use by media in the Desert Southwest; perhaps someone can trace this development? Lthanlon (talk) 18:12, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

i wold like to suggest that simply because media uses a term incorrectly does not mean that Wikipedia should. (an example is the media calling all of phoenix a valley instead of a bowl, or the media incorrectly and often referring to Apache helicopters as Black Hawks, or saying that Barack Obama has taken more vacation days than his predecessor) From experience, i can say there is a difference between severity of Middle Eastern/African Haboobs and North American dust storms. And although the media uses the word Haboob for North American dust storms, it is not without controversy as can be displayed here in a New York Times article (non-subscription excerpt at this link with link to actual pay-to-view article)

SOLUTION- i suggest removing the North American reference from the Wikipedia DEFINITION section and instead placing a footnote about the controversy of the word usage when referring to North American Dust Storms. This should satisfy both sides of the argument by saying "yes the word is used, but with controversy and without matching AMS definition"

(i apologize for being long winded) 70.190.14.184 (talk) 12:07, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Don't apologize for being long winded (was that a pun?) as you weren't. There i a danger here that haboob will become a synonym for dust storm. Is there anything wrong with the term "dust storm"? I don't think so. An unnecessary new word that unlike a Latin or Greek word does not even have the advantage of being easily converted into an adjective, is a complete waste of time and brain space. And if it does become a commonly used synonym for 'dust storm' it sets a precedent at Wikipedia and beyond, for the same to happen with snow storm, or even snow or storm and many other words. Tsunami has largely replace tidal wave to the benifit of who? Wikipedia has tremendous power which it should not abuse. General Student 21 (talk) 17:47, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

PBS felt it important to clarify the difference, but over the past five months there now have been reports of haboobs, making sure to distinguish the two.-- OsirisV (talk) 13:59, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Small boat image and potential improvements

The small boat image used in the North Africa section seems unrelated to the contents of the article apart from the fact that it was taken in North Africa. Unless the image is taken during a haboob (in which case, its description should be updated), does this image really contribute or relate to the article? If not, it should probably be removed. Also, an improvement I see could be adding more related images, similar to how other weather articles (such as Tornado, Winter storm, and Dust devil) have multiple related images of their conditions.

These are just some potential ideas I had. TealWingGreen (talk) 04:25, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Expansion of lede?

Jaravedr expanded the lede and removed the tag with this edit. Cdjp1 then reverted that here. What was wrong with the original lede expansion? Seemed ok to me. — hike395 (talk) 23:05, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

It was entirely LLM generated. There is an active conversation regarding these edits going on at ANI right now NicheSports (talk) 23:18, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Rewriting of leads by LLM -- Cdjp1 (talk) 23:20, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't realize. I went through and edited the lede generated by Jaravedr and made sure it only summarized what was actually in the article, and restored just that. Is that acceptable? — hike395 (talk) 03:21, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

If people review it, it's all fine. As you can see from the thread, and Jaravedr's editing logs, rewriting leads (including extensive expansion) across dozens of articles within single hours, is a worrying indicator that it is being generated and not reviewed. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 10:52, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

The lead still has significant issues. Haboobs (at least in the US) are primarily caused by thunderstorm outflow which has nothing to do with "collapsing thunderstorms". Outflow-dominant storms can be self-sustaining and persist for 100+ miles (such as in a derecho) - here is a great video covering this if anyone is interested . The LLM lead generation put too much weight on the references to "collapsing thunderstorms" in the body, which is over-referenced to haboobs in a specific part of the world and frankly needs its own rewrite.

There are other clear issues as well - the claims about windspeed are just pulled from the body, where they are completely unsourced. This should definitely be removed from the lead. Additionally, I suspect that the claimed windspeed numbers (if we found the source) would actually be referring the speed of the gust front/squall line/outflow boundary instead of the peak outflow winds themselves. Outflow wind speeds can be locally much higher than the rate of displacement of the parent storm.

Blech. This is the issue with the LLM edits. They "sound" plausible but can just completely bungle actual subject matter.

We should just revert and try again NicheSports (talk) 19:05, 6 September 2025 (UTC)