Dust storm marks stunning debut of monsoon season

The dust storm that rolled into Maricopa around 7:30 p.m. last night looked like a scene out of the movie “The Mummy,” where some angry deity is awakened from a 3,000-year-old spell and is out to wreak havoc.

The National Weather Service estimated winds speeds in the range of 50 to 70 mph, which is almost the strength of a hurricane. Called a haboob, an Arabic word that means sandstorm, the dust storm marked the beginning of the monsoon season, which in most years doesn’t get active until later in the summer.

However, the last few days have seen strong winds with low visibility on the roads, contributing to an accident on State Road 347 Sunday evening that caused traffic delays.

“I don’t remember it ever being like this in early July,” said Bryan Bergland, who lives in the Alterra subdivision. “Maybe next month in August. But it was weird to have the wind and dust with a just enough drops of rain to make mud spots all over the car.”

Maricopa resident Jerry Guadiana served in the military during Desert Storm. He was visiting Harrah’s Ak-Chin Casino when the storm hit. He compared last night’s dust storm to the ones he saw while serving in the Middle East.

“I served a few years in the Middle East and hadn’t seen anything like those dust storms here in America,” said Guadiana. “They would just pop out of nowhere and we would hunker down in the tanks if we were out on patrol, but if you were caught in them on foot, you had to completely cover up because the sand would just blister your face.”

Ken Waters, a warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Phoenix, said the dust storm began northwest of Tucson with a complex of thunderstorms. “That whole area was pretty hot yesterday as far as thunderstorm activity,” he said.

Sometimes during a big thunderstorm a phenomenon called a downburst will occur, he said. Air will descend violently through the thunderstorm to the ground and radiate away from the storm on the ground.

“As that wind travels over an area with a lot of dry dust, the dust will suspend in the air and build a dust foot, or a vertically rising cloud,” he said. “The dust will keep rising and rising and picking up more dust, and wind speeds at the leading edge can be as much as 100 mph.”

Last night’s leading edge was traveling at about 50 mph, he said, and the NWS had estimated wind speeds inside the cloud were as high as 70 mph.

“This was pretty exceptional,” said Waters, who was busy this morning fielding phone calls from media all over the country. He said the storm traveled “well past Phoenix” and estimated it dissipated after about 150 to 200 miles.

The cloud was more than a mile high and about 50 miles wide, according to the NWS.

“As we came out the sky was clear but as we were walking to the car we saw this huge dust thing,” she said. “At first we thought it was a rain cloud but it was moving at such a great speed. I haven’t seen anything like that before.”

Sengupta said she and her husband are new to Arizona, and didn’t realize it was such a huge storm, so they started driving. “We figured it would pass but we couldn’t even see the lanes,” she said. “We could not pull off the side of I-10 and could not get off because people were driving 65 mph.”

They got off the interstate at Wild Horse Pass Hotel and Casino and waited for almost an hour. They didn’t see any rain until they got back to Maricopa, she said, but did see intense lightning as they were driving home.

Despite its menacing presence, no deaths or serious injuries were reported by police and fire departments, and, except for a few downed trees, property damage was minimal.

“The biggest concern in a dust storm is vehicle accidents,” said Fire Chief Wade Brannon.

He said his department did not receive service calls for traffic accidents or property damage last night. The storm did set off several fire alarms from smoke detectors. Brannon said smoke detectors work by sensing the concentration of particulates in the air, and the detectors can mistakenly detect dusk as smoke.

With the monsoon season just beginning, Brannon expects there will more dust storms. If caught in a dust storm, he advises drivers to get completely off the road and turn off their lights. If the road’s shoulder isn’t wide enough to pull off, then look for a parking lot.

“The last thing you want is for a semi going 55 mph to rear-end you,” he said.

Nearly 5,200 customers of Electrical District No. 3 experienced power outages from the storm, said ED3 spokesman Jim Hartdegen.

He said the outages began at 7:15 p.m., and by 1:26 a.m. this morning all customers were back on line. “The major reason for the outages was the dust and the rain; the dust causing shorts,” he said.

Hartdegen said he has lived in this area all his life but hasn’t seen a dust storm like last night’s in 35 or 40 years. “The color just amazed me,” he said.

Editor's note: InMaricopa.com would like to thank all of our local shutter bugs who submitted photos for the gallery.