Monsoon storms blow through Phoenix area, knocking out power for thousands

Strong monsoon storms blew through the Phoenix area on Wednesday night and Thursday morning, leaving thousands of residents without power.

As of about 6:30 a.m., more than 4,400 Salt River Project customers and approximately 500 Arizona Public Service customers were still without electricity, according to the utility companies’ outage maps.

By 10 a.m., the APS map showed fewer than 100 customers affected by outages related to the weather. Meanwhile, the SRP map showed more than 2,000 customers without electricity, although it wasn’t clear how many of those outages were due to Wednesday night’s storms.

According to ABC15, outages affected more than 30,000 customers in the immediate aftermath of the heaviest storm activity after 10 p.m. Wednesday.

“We had storms [in the] middle of the evening move into east Phoenix and then they pretty much consolidated and moved into central Phoenix, but they kind of died out and then redeveloped over much of Tempe, Chandler and Mesa. That’s where we saw the heaviest rainfall amounts of up to 1¼ inches,” Chris Kuhlman, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Phoenix, told KTAR News 92.3 FM.

Last night's storms that lingered into the early morning hours will limit storm chances across the lower deserts this evening, with little to no storms expected. Scattered storms are still expected across the higher terrain areas of N, E, & SE AZ this afternoon & evening. #azwx pic.twitter.com/XWfl88pb8N

— NWS Phoenix (@NWSPhoenix) August 20, 2026

Marcos de Niza High School in Tempe sustained storm-related damage, but classes will go on as scheduled Thursday.

Only a few spots in the West Valley saw rain, mostly to the south.

Monsoon storms produced strong winds

Kuhlman said there were reports of blowing dust, but reduced visibility was not a widespread issue.

“I think the wind might have been the bigger story — the strong winds across at least the east and northern parts of Phoenix, where anywhere from 50 to 65 mph winds were reported,” he said.

Kuhlman added that he doesn’t expect a repeat of Wednesday night’s monsoon storm activity over the next few days.

“I’m really not expecting a whole lot to happen today. We’ll have some storms in the mountains and it’ll probably be like that Friday and Saturday. Maybe we’ll have … a few isolated storms today, but it’s not likely to be anywhere close to what we had last evening,” he said.

Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, which the National Weather Service uses for the city’s official readings, received 0.56 inches of rain late Wednesday and early Thursday.

The overnight storms pushed Phoenix’s monsoon season (June 15-Sept. 30) total to 1.21 inches.

KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Anna Olp contributed to this report.

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