Weird Ash Cloud Smothers Paraguay

A wall of ash and dust roaring across parts of 
Paraguay earlier this week. 

As I've noted a few times lately already, the parts of South America south of the Equator (meaning all but the northern tip of the continent) have suffered a horrible, hot stormy summer.  

Punishing record heat waves have been punctuated by violent storms and torrential rains that have proved quite deadly in places like Ecuador and Argentina.  

It just got even weirder.

A huge haboob swept into large swaths of Paraguay. Haboobs are usually dust storms. This one was worse - largely ash from wildfires.

Haboobs are usually massive walls of dust, usually triggered by desert thunderstorms, that sweep across the landscape, cutting visibility often to near zero.  You might be familiar with haboobs that often strike Arizona during the summer monsoon season, when thunderstorms throw up these massive dust storms that then sweep into urban areas like Phoenix, Scottsdale and Yuma.

As the Washington Post explains: 

"Residents of southern Paraguay experienced an apocalyptic looking scene Monday when a mile-tall wall of smoke, ash and dust descended on the landscape. Day turned into night around dinnertime as the smoke blotted out the sun, extinguishing the formerly partly cloudy skies as strong winds surged through the region. The smoke, originating from wildfires in Argentina, was enough to cause streetlights to turn on and pose a respiratory danger. Residents' eyes also probably stung from ash and fine particulates."

The worst of this ash haboob hit around Ayolas, Paraguay, a city of 65,000 near the Argentine border.

As the Washington Post reports, the area of Argentina where the ash storm originated has endured two years of drought that allowed wildfires to consume almost two million acres by late February. Nearby farmland has turned to dust in the drought. 

The combination of massive areas of burned out landscape and dust bowl farmlands created the conditions for the ash haboob to form.

The part of Argentina where the haboob originated often gets intense thunderstorms, much like the Great Plains of the United States see in the spring and summer. These storms can produce hail the size of soft balls or greater, tornadoes and ferocious straight line winds. 

Intense thunderstorms formed this past week, and with all that ash just sitting there, the wall of soot was born.  Since there was so much ash mixed in, the haboob was much darker, and felt much more toxic than a regular dust haboob. 

La Nina, an atmospheric and oceanic cyclical weather pattern, often contributes to droughts in the area where the ash haboob originated. But of course chances are that climate change made this situation worse. It was likely hotter in recent months in South America than it otherwise would be without climate change.  

I don't know whether the ash haboob would have happened without climate change, but I imagine it wouldn't have been as bad as it was with it. 

Whether or not there's a strong or weak link to climate change, this ash haboob is the kind of event that sticks in the local populations' collective mind and makes them more concerned about climate change.

Examples of these kinds of weird things are increasing. Residents of the San Francisco Bay area are still weirded out by that day in September, 2020 when massive California wildfires turned the sky into an apocalyptic orange. 

Or the "Day After Tomorrow" like flash flood scenes from New York City last September from the remains of Hurricane Ida.   

What weird, awful scenes will climate change present us with next? Stay tuned! 

 Video: 

The Guardian displays views of the ash haboob in Paraguay: