Our dust storms and a scientific look at their causes/remedies: (Phoenix: hotel, home)

[DougStark]

When covering our local dust storm events, our local media never mentions the "story behind the story" !(in part bc the general public has a 10 sec attention-span), and in the case of dust storms in AZ, the underlying story is that there are hundreds of thousands of acres of degraded land in southern AZ that were once farmland but are now dust-prone wastelands.

GOOD RESOURCE/STUDY ON THIS ISSUE FROM THE UA:

https://wrrc.arizona.edu/publication...ed-restoration

[broncosilly]

The report is twenty five years old.

[DougStark]

Oh, meaning you've read it before?

The information isn't out of date.

[lubby]

I was actually driving through one Wednesday night coming back from seeing the meteor crater. About 45 minutes from our hotel it got really dusty and cloudy you could not see a thing on the road and being from NY I never saw such a thing. It was both scary and cool at the same time. Does Phoenix get these a lot?

[DougStark]

Unfortunately, Phoenix gets them almost every summer. Some mild, others very very bad. I hate them.

[spoonman1]

Seems to depend a lot on where you live. The southern areas seem to get hit much harder due to more farmland and currents passing into Phoenix along the 10 fwy.

[KurtAZ]

Partly farmland...partly the fact that Southern Phoenix borders the Gila River Indian Reservation. Miles and miles of open desert. Some used for farming, most just open desert. SW of that is the Ak-Chin Reservation. South of that is historically ranch land and the Tohono O'Dham Reservation...if you have ever driven south past Casa Grande and Picacho Peak it gets REALLY windy during certain times of the year.

Dust Storms coming in from the East are coming in from that huge expanse of open desert east of Coolidge and Florence.

[Valley Native]

I've said many times before that a lot of these dust storms can be prevented. Sure, this is a desert environment, and when it's windy, there is going to be some dust regardless ... however, the massive "haboobs" we periodically see during the summer monsoon are often the result of abandoned farmland south of the metro area. A good share of it is found on INDIAN land, and below is one example:

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.1284...7i13312!8i6656

It's a similar scenario that caused the Dust Bowl in the Central Plains during the 1930s: abandoned farms and poor soil maintenance on existing farmland. Do you ever hear about massive, widespread dust storms in the Plains anymore? No, and that's because there are now better farming techniques used to prevent soil erosion compared to 80+ years ago.

Unfortunately, since much of the problem originates on Indian Reservations (which are declared "sovereign nations"), there likely is little or nothing the state of AZ can do. If these stupid reservations were eliminated and development was allowed to replace these dirty, worthless acres of abandoned farmland, it would be a step to prevention. Meanwhile, the SE Valley chokes on dust & dirt every summer, which eventually spreads to other parts of the metro area!

[unwillingphoenician]

I haven't read the report, but from the eye test the farm and grazing land south of Phoenix is degraded. The upper surface of the desert should be alive, and bound by a crust of bacteria, fungi, lichen, etc. When you drive west of the 10 south of Phoenix, it's just dust. Overgrazing is often a cause, along with abandoned farmland. Hooves break up the crust and it blows away. The big haboobs seem to form south of Phoenix. When the storms drop down from the rim into north Phoenix, we still get dust, but much less. The fix is to leave the land alone for a long time. I don't know what happens out there on the reservation, but if somebody runs their sheep or whatever across that dust once a year, it isn't helping. That area is dust devil central for the same reason. No soil crust, lots and lots of dust.

[LBTRS]

I was driving home last month during one of the big storms and you could see the dust being picked up from the plowed fields that had nothing growing on them. The areas adjacent to this had very little dust but when you drove by these fields you could not see the road in front of you and people were actually stopped because of zero viability.

I would bet the majority of the dust we see is due to plowed farm land that allows the dust to be picked up easily.