The Phoenix area, including the East Valley, was hit by two Category 5 dust storms within days of each other in early August, a back-to-back occurrence that has not been recorded since the rating scale began being used.
Category 5 is the top of the scale used to rate dust storms, and it has been applied only about six times since 2011, according to meteorologist Marshall Shepherd, writing in Forbes. Two inside a single week is unprecedented in that record.
What the storms did
The larger storm sent a towering wall of dust across the metro area, dropping visibility to near zero in minutes.
More than 60,000 utility customers lost power, with the majority of outages in Maricopa County, according to AccuWeather. Wind gusts of roughly 70 mph damaged a connector bridge at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, and the airport went into a ground stop of about an hour, with no flights leaving or landing.
Why haboobs are dangerous
A haboob is a wall of dust pushed ahead of collapsing thunderstorm outflow, and the Valley sits in one of the few regions in the world that regularly produces them during monsoon season.
