Phoenix area wakes up to rain, lightning, thunder, power outages

Scattered rainfall popped up in Phoenix and surrounding areas on Tuesday morning, knocking out electricity for thousands of customers.

More than 5,600 Arizona Public Service and Salt River Project customers lost power by 8 a.m., according to the utility companies’ outage maps, with weather listed as the known cause in many cases.

The biggest localized outages were between Indian School and Thomas roads west of 31st Avenue and east of 35th Avenue in Phoenix, with over 1,800 customers losing electricity. SRP reported two outages each affecting more than 1,000 customers, one east of Papago Park in the Scottsdale/Tempe area and one in Mesa southeast of Dobson and Broadway roads.

As of 10:30 a.m., only about 350 customers who lost power while the storms were active were still without electricity, with over 300 of them from a single SRP outage in the area of Seventh Avenue and Broadway Road.

How much rain fell in Phoenix on Tuesday morning?

Central Phoenix, Scottsdale, Fountain Hills and Cave Creek and multiple East Valley cities received up to a quarter-inch of measurable precipitation, according to Maricopa County rainfall data. Only a few areas west of Interstate 17 received more than trace amounts.

The storm activity moved out to the west or dissipated by 9 a.m.

The monsoon storms produced lightning and thunder in central Phoenix and Arcadia. A palm tree was spotted with flames on it after a lightning strike shortly before 7 a.m. near Seventh Avenue and Osborn Road.

Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, which the National Weather Service uses for the city’s official records, received 0.02 inches of rain shortly after the storm activity began about 3 a.m.

After a monthslong dry spell, the airport has now received measurable rainfall four times this month for a total of 0.46 inches. That is still below the normal July total of .077 inches with a few days left in the month.

Shortly after 8 a.m. Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration was reporting an average 15-minute delay for Sky Harbor departures, with weather cited as the cause. The Phoenix airport delay message was gone from the FAA website by 10:30 a.m.

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Meteorologist Alicia Ryan of the weather service’s Phoenix office said the storm activity is expected to run its course in the Valley on Tuesday morning.

“After that, we’re not expecting too much more here in the metro. Afternoon showers and into the evening still will linger in the higher terrain and Gila County, but as far as the metro goes, this kind of seems like our best possibility really for the rest of the week,” Ryan told KTAR News 92.3 FM.

KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Shira Tanzer contributed to this report.

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