Ok so maya has volumes that you can add to fields. Meaning a field like turbulence won't affect particles/fluid until the volume intersects with them.

Specifically what I'd like to do is blow particles as the camera is moving through them. Making it feel like the camera is causing this. In maya I would animate the camera, add a field of some sort and inside the field use volume volume shape that is parented to the camera.

How would this be done in Houdini. Certainly if Maya can do this, Houdini can.

Thanks in advance

This is how I would do this but in Houdini there are multiple ways to achieve same effect.

Thank you very much for this. This was VERY helpful.

Is there anyway to add swirl or wind to the blown particles?

timb
Is there anyway to add swirl or wind to the blown particles?

Yes, you can use a wind node and a vex code to affecs particles with speed greater than zero; or instead of all this metaball things you can use a sphere with camera animation and group particles which are collided by the sphere.
Sorry I can't help you with another example so you can search for collision behavior on the pop solver.