Crews restore power after outages from massive Valley dust storm

PHOENIX - Salt River Project and Arizona Public Service crews are working to restore power to hundreds of customers Wednesday morning after a massive haboob moved through the Valley the night before.

SRP officials said about 400 customers are without power as of 5:30 a.m.

Tuesday night, approximately 3,000 customers were without power, down from 9,400 earlier in the night. Spotty outages were being reported across their entire service area, according to spokesman Jeff Lane.

APS said about 600 of their customers are without power in the far West Valley as of 7:30 a.m. Officials said power is expected to be back up in the afternoon.

That's down from about 1,300 the night before, which was initially 10,300 at the height of the storm.

Sky Harbor officials said service resumed at the airport after the near hurricane-force winds grounded flights in and out of the facility for about an hour Tuesday night.

People walking or waiting outside the terminals could be seen covering their faces with anything they could find as the thick dust moved through.

“I have seen dust storms before but this was like the old dust bowl days,” said Thomas, who works at the airport.

A Phoenix woman told us she's lived here 50 years, and she's never seen anything like Tuesday night.