Be prepared for the haboob, the mother of all dust storms

Climate change has increased heat and dryness in the Central Valley and SoCal, adding to health risks

- By Susanne Rust

A TOWERING cloud of dust engulfs part of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on Monday.

For anyone wondering whether intense dust storms, such as the haboob that enveloped Phoenix this week, are possible in Southern California, the answer is yes.

They’ve hit in the recent past and are a growing issue over much of Southern California and the Central Valley, thanks to the drying associated with climate change, water overuse, wildfires, off-roading, tractors on dry soil and construction, experts say.

In 2022, for instance, there was a massive haboob in the Salton Sea area. The dust from that nighttime storm — with a 3,000-foot-high wall of dust and 60-mph winds — went all the way to Los Angeles.

“It was insane,” said Amato Evan, a climate researcher at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. It was so thick that cameras picked it up in Riverside, he said. More sensitive instruments measured the particles all the way from Lake Elsinore to Pasadena and downtown Los Angeles. He said a similar storm occurred in 2023.