One Valley man is finally back home after a massive wall of dust diverted his flight to Las Vegas.
Sky Harbor is back to normal operations following a busy Sunday night.
The airport says a total of 28 flights were diverted and there were dozens of delays, due to the weather and a fire alarm that went off in the air traffic control tower.
"It started getting really choppy and a lot of lightning," says Andrew Woodworth, whose flight was diverted.
A Southwest Airlines flight that left Ontario, California, and ended up getting stuck in the middle of a monsoon storm during its final descent into Phoenix. Passenger Andrew Woodworth captured the moment on his cell phone.
"The haboob was kind of passing this way and we were passing through this way. It was kind of just swallowing up the mountains and city lights and everything else down below... just watching it slowly get darker and darker," says Woodworth.
Shortly after, the captain came on.
"He notified us that Sky Harbor was shut down and that they had actually evacuated the air traffic control center and so, we were not going to be landing in Phoenix," says Woodworth.
Instead, the flight was diverted to Las Vegas. Once there, passengers found out winds were in excess of 70 miles per hour across the Valley.
"That's hurricane category winds right there. No wonder we couldn't land," says Woodworth.
We're told it took nearly 7 hours, but the flight eventually made it to the Valley safe and sound.
"Some people don't like the summer because of the heat but I think it's pretty awesome getting to have these storms and the phenomena of weather that it brings," says Woodworth.