Valley starts to dry out in aftermath of destructive thunderstorms, massive wall of dust

PHOENIX – The Valley is starting to dry out after a wild night of monsoon weather that included a dramatic wall of dust and destructive thunderstorms.

“The atmosphere is pretty worked over from yesterday’s activity,” Katherine Berislavich, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service (NWS) in Phoenix, told KTAR News 92.3 FM on Tuesday morning. “So, we’re not really expecting a whole lot of development later this afternoon and into the evening.”

Tuesday’s forecast calls for high temperatures in the upper 90s and a 15-20% chance for precipitation.

Any rain that does come down will probably be limited to the higher terrain north and east of Phoenix and perhaps the West Valley, which saw only light activity Monday night.

“There could be a few stray showers, maybe some storms that pop up, but not expecting anything near what we saw yesterday,” Berislavich said.

High temperatures are expected to return to triple digits starting Wednesday as the storm potential fades.

“We’ve already started drying out a little bit, and then we’re just going to continue to see that drying trend for the rest of the week,” Berislavich said Tuesday. “We’ll see less than 15% chance for tomorrow and then really dry conditions for the rest of the week.”

Wall of dust darkens Valley skies during monsoon storm

Central Phoenix and the East Valley took the brunt of Monday night’s monsoon storm.

Perhaps the most memorable part of Monday’s storm activity was an imposing wall of brown dust that rolled in from the southeast before 5 p.m. Driver visibility plummeted and the sky darkened as the haboob blew into the East Valley before dissipating.

The dust storm was followed by widespread showers that impacted much of the Phoenix area.

“A large chunk of the metro saw accumulating rainfall,” NWS meteorologist Mark O’Malley said early Monday. “A lot of that was fairly light. The heaviest amounts were from Chandler through central Phoenix, where between a half an inch and 1 inch of rain accumulated.”

In fact, it was the wettest day at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, which the NWS uses for the city’s official readings, in nearly six months.

Phoenix started the day with a monsoon season rainfall total of only 0.2 inches. But 0.29 inches came down on Monday, increasing the total to 0.49 inches – still over an inch below normal for this time of the monsoon season (June 15 to Sept. 30).

Phoenix monsoon storm leaves damage in its wake

Along with the rain, the airport was blasted by strong winds, causing a temporary ground stop and tearing off part of the Terminal 4 roof. That led to water accumulating in some passenger areas.

An airport spokesman said Tuesday morning that all systems were back to normal after contractors worked through the night to make repairs.

The storm activity also knocked out power for tens of thousands of Valley households and businesses, but almost all of the outages were resolved by the time people were waking up Tuesday morning.

KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Colton Krolak and Brandon King contributed to this report.

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