By MIKAYLA MACE
Arizona Sonora News
Everyone in Arizona knows what haboobs are: A towering wall of dust, sometimes a half-mile high and a hundred miles wide, caused by summer monsoons rolling in over Tucson and southeast Arizona, and slamming the dry, loose dirt into the air. This monster sweeps across the desert northward toward Phoenix.
These large dust storms can be predicted, seen and avoided.
The haboob’s lesser known cousin, the dust channel is much smaller but more unpredictable and dangerous.
The most dangerous dust channels pop up quickly next to freeways and are borne out of the dry, loose dirt from devegetated land or fallow fields. On windy days, this dirt is easily blown in thick curtains across freeways, cutting visibility down to as low as five feet.
In 2015, 47 crashes were caused blowing dust statewide. 17 were injured, the rest was only damage, according to Arizona Department of Transportation.
The last fatal accident attributed to blown dust was in 2013. Three people died.
This statistics only apply to roads managed by ADOT, interstates and state and federal routes.
These scenarios are most common during dry winters, which is what Arizona is headed for this year.
Scientists and politicians are now trying to find ways to warn the public of potentially dangerous dust. ADOT has a solution which involves the installation of sensors along a stretch of Interstate 10 between Eloy and Picacho Peak in Fall 2017 to serve as a warning system for drivers and the Department of Public Safety that will cost $12.8 million. It is funded in-part by a $54 million federal grant.
Some atmospheric scientists and modelers said these sensors are a good idea, but they also have different solutions that might be more effective and much cheaper.
William Sprigg, research professor emeritus in atmospheric sciences, and Michael Leuthold, Manager of the Regional Weather Modeling Program, agree that dust channels occur too quickly and last too briefly for this warning system to be effective.
“I’m really happy they’re doing that but it’s only part of the problem,” Sprigg said.
Prevent with plants
Leuthold said he’s seen this scenario play out before.
“In here are tons of orchards,” he said pointing to Google Earth satellite images zoomed in on San Simon. “You can see all these old farms that used to be in here. And 10-15 years ago, they had terrible problems with dust storms.”
Follow farms and bladed land contributed to frequent dust channels along San Simon’s stretch of Interstate 10.
The state installed sensors in San Simone like the new ones that will be installed along I-10 by Picacho Peak now.
But Leuthold thinks that this was unnecessary because after the area was left alone for a few years, it revegetated naturally, and the problem vanished. The only caveat to this, he said, is that last year, the area was bladed again in preparation for another orchard.
“The solution to this particular problem is to not allow this area adjacent to the freeway to be disturbed,” he said pointing to a swath of land south of Interstate 10. “Or if it is, immediately plant and prevent.”
Why install costly sensors when you can just leave it alone and plants will install themselves free of charge?
Another problem is that these dust channels blow up so quickly that you can’t warn for it.
“Plus DPS knows where all these places are because they have all the crashes cataloged and you can see in the data, they’re very specific,” Leuthold said.
Perfecting Predictions
To Sprigg however, there’s more to the ultimate solution. “I don’t believe that you can take care of the dust right adjacent to the highway and say we’ve done our jobs,” he said.
He plans on using improved, high-resolution atmospheric models which will simulate future dust events.
By using National Weather Service weather models and then adding in his own dust component to that model, he can see how blown dust might travel around Arizona.
“We want to run the model for years. We want to do it for 5 years or 3 years at least in an operational sense so that we can tell somebody what our accuracy is,” Sprigg said.
He wants confidence in the models. When this is achieved, it means that there is more accuracy in the predictions.
The problem is finding funding and the lack of cooperation from different agencies who might be able to prevent dust related issues.
“I’m particularly frustrated because I believe that we can save lives,” Sprigg said.
##
Mikayla Mace has a bachelor’s in neuroscience, a minor in astronomy and is working on her master’s in journalism, so she can be a science writer and illustrator some day. Mikayla is from Tucson, Arizona and likes to read, paint, learn different instruments and play soccer in her free time.