Arizona Dust Storm: Thousands Without Power, Flights Grounded

A towering dust cloud caused havoc in Arizona on Monday, grounding flights and leaving thousands without power.

The slow-moving cloud — known as a haboob — hit parts of Phoenix and Arizona City, 60 miles to the southeast, late Monday afternoon, at one point leaving 15,000 energy customers in the dark. The number still without power Tuesday morning was more than 5,000, according to Poweroutage.us, mostly in Maricopa County.

Videos posted on social media showed entire neighborhoods engulfed in darkness as the dust storm rolled through. A video shot from a passing plane showed the sheer extent of the cloud, stretching for miles into the distance.

A haboob is a type of dust storm kicked up and pushed along by intense winds from a thunderstorm, creating an immense wall of dust that can sometimes tower thousands of feet and stretch for hundreds of miles.

Haboobs can occur anywhere in the United States but are most common in arid, wide-open spaces, such as the Southwest.

Monday's haboob was fueled by a storm that hit outside Phoenix. As the system petered out and collapsed, its winds fanned down and out, picking up enormous amounts of dust and debris.

Heavy wind and rain followed the dust storm, causing delays at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, the country's 11th-busiest airport, which sustained some damage to a terminal roof.

Heather Shelbrack, the airport’s deputy aviation director for public relations, told The Associated Press that staff members were "identifying leaks and attempting to clean up water where it has collected in passenger areas."

Flash flood warnings were in effect in some parts of Arizona and eastern California on Monday night. Police in Gilbert, southeast of Phoenix, said heavy rain brought down trees and caused traffic light outages.

The Arizona Transportation Department advised motorists this summer to never drive into a dust storm and to pull over where it is safe to do so if they get stuck inside one.

Dust storms and 50 mph winds caused problems for campers at the Burning Man festival in Nevada's Black Rock Desert over the weekend.