The powerful storm that whipped parts of metro Phoenix with dusty winds and drenching rain cast the area in the spotlight on Aug. 26, with national news media marveling at the “towering wall of dust” and apocalyptic conditions that engulfed the Valley.
The storm also created next-day buzz for many Valley residents.
Retirees Belva Stites and Judy Steffen whipped out their cell phones to compare photos of flooding and damage that they witnessed around their Ahwatukee homes during early Monday evening.
“I’ve been trimming all morning,” said Stites, who lost a Palo Verde tree.
Steffen said she lost two trees in her backyard and an ocotillo in her front yard. “It felt like the whole house was vibrating from the wind,” she said. “The rain hitting the window sounded like rocks.”
Steffen, originally from Chicago, has lived in the area since 2008 and has lived through many haboobs in the meantime. “But this storm felt like the worst one,” she said.
Commercial airline pilots Jason Heath and Jamie Gunderson also felt the storm’s surge from their respective homes in the Laveen area. “It started as a big wall of dust,” said Gunderson, 52, an American Airlines pilot who had just flown in earlier that day. “It blew around some lawn chairs, but there was no damage in my area.”
Heath, 58, a Southwest Airlines pilot, wasn’t quite so fortunate. He said one tree in his yard had some branches break, and he lost power at his home from around 7 p.m. to 4:30 a.m.
The storm caused temporary disruptions at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, with the heavy rain and wind causing leaks in terminals that crews worked into the night to repair. Airport operations had returned to normal by the morning of Aug. 26, said Sky Harbor spokesman Jon Brodsky in an email to The Arizona Republic.
According to Sky Harbor’s flight tracker, around 13 flights were disrupted between 11 a.m. Aug. 25 and 11 a.m. Aug. 27, though totals were shifting slightly throughout the day. As of noon Aug. 26, the tracker showed Southwest Airlines canceling one flight to El Paso.
The delays mostly affected Southwest and American Airlines, plus one flight each for United Airlines, one for Frontier Airlines and one for Contour Airlines. Most delays were scheduled to last two hours or less, though some Frontier passengers faced a wait of more than 16 hours, according to updates provided by Sky Harbor.
The storm hit parts of the East Valley especially hard. Landscaping crews started cleanup efforts as soon as the sun rose Aug. 26, and utility workers labored to turn on power for customers and make other repairs.
Steffen, whose yard backs onto a golf course in Ahwatukee, said she was saddened by the loss of her two backyard trees, especially as one held a bird feeder that she had received from her daughter. “I had so much fun watching the birds,” she said. “Now I’ll have to watch the golfers.”
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Storm, dust put metro Phoenix in spotlight, creating national and local buzz