Monstrous dust storm swallows Phoenix, plunges US city in near-total darkness

Phoenix “disappeared” late on Aug 25, swallowed by a massive wall of dust that plunged the south-western American city into near-zero visibility.

Videos posted on TikTok showed the dust storm – known as a haboob – lumbering towards Phoenix and then collapsing, slowly and inexorably, over the city.

From a distance, the wall resembled a dust-coloured tide; from within, visibility dropped to almost nothing.

Drivers on the interstates – advised by the National Weather Service to “pull aside, stay alive” – crawled forward or stopped altogether.

Then came the thunderstorm and gale-force winds.

Trees fell, roofs were ripped away, and a power outage spread across some 60,000 homes.

A connector bridge at the airport was shredded, and flights were grounded for about an hour.

The scene repeated itself in Gilbert county, 35.4km south-east of Phoenix, where police warned of darkened intersections and tangled trees.

Arizona is no stranger to dust storms in its monsoon season, but the one on Aug 25 was memorable in its scale and theatricality.

Only days earlier, a similar storm had blown across the Black Rock Desert, where early arrivals for the Burning Man festival found themselves scrambling to secure tents and signage.

As attendees began arriving at the remote desert location on Aug 23, strong thunderstorm winds kicked up a dust plume, closing access roads and sending vendors scrambling to secure their tents.

“We had to take our sign down. We weren’t expecting that,” vendor Mike Chuda told CNN affiliate KTVN. “The wind was in such a perfect angle that it was bending our booth forward. So that was pretty wild.”