We’re days away from Monsoon 2018, and many are looking back on the top five devastating storms the Valley has seen in years past.
Areas in and around Phoenix have seen their fair share of storms and the devastating aftermath that follows. Mother Nature sure puts on a show across Arizona during the summer.
5. August 2008 - Wild winds battered Arizona State University's football practice field, fracturing other buildings with winds whipping at more than 100 miles per hour.
4. July 2011 - It was likely most historic dust storm to strike. A massive wall of dust smothered the city, dropping visibility to nearly nothing. That towering cloud covered a nearly 100-mile stretch.
3. July 2015 - Relentless rain flooded Wickenburg, sweeping RVs off the road and ravaging backyards.
“All of the sudden it sounded like a freight train showed up and water just started running over the back,” a resident said.
2. August 2016 - Some of the pumps along Interstate 17 shut down, causing major flooding. Cameras caught four water rescues as submerged vehicles clogged the highway.
There are several dozen pumps throughout the Valley and each can drain a swimming pool in about three minutes.
1. We still refer to it as the "Storm of the Century," when we saw record-setting rain and remnants of a tropical storm blowing wild weather across Arizona in September 2014.
The storm swept in overnight, flooding Interstate 10 in downtown Phoenix along with miles of side streets. More than three inches of rain falling at the airport in just seven hours. Parts of the East Valley got almost double that!
A Mesa neighborhood found itself under several feet of water, the damage later prompting lawsuits on behalf of 300 homeowners who ended up under water.
“All of a sudden I noticed that water was coming from under the door,” Karen Gleason said.
The flash flooding knocked out power to hundreds of homes as the water submerged transformers. People in the area blasted back, calling the system faulty, claiming storm pumps dumped dirty water in their neighborhoods. These homeowners didn’t live in a designated flood zone, so without insurance, they had to pay up for repairs.
