12News Team Coverage: Tracking monsoon activity across the Valley

[00:00:01]Welcome everyone to 12 News at 10. We've been tracking monsoon activity across the valley for over the past hour as storms from the east started to move into the Phoenix metro area >> and they moved in with a bang. Strong winds, rainfall, ground stop at Sky Harbor. You name it, a lot of effects from this storm. Let's take a look outside our ADO camera right now. We're going to start south of the valley. This is the 347, the main roadway that goes down into the town of Maricopa and Casablanca Road. And we saw some pretty thick dust down here earlier and that dust appears like it's still in the air.

[00:00:32]>> Yeah. Yeah, we did have a dust storm advisory there. We're going to get to Lindsay coming up in just a moment with more on that. We do have team coverage tonight. Lindsay is tracking the radar for us and Gabby and Shawn are live in our weather trackers. We want to start first with Shawn Rice who is near Sky Harbor Airport. Now, Sean, I understand there's a bit of a delay with with your signal out there, but something happened tonight, uh, if if the reports are correct, that I've never heard of before, that a plane had to make a a landing at Luke Air Force Base instead of Sky Harbor, >> right? Yeah. Something we do not see a lot is a plane landing, a commercial plane that is, landing at Luke Air Force Base, but we saw it tonight. I first want to set the scene of what it's like here at Sky Harbor Airport. Conditions have been uh very similar for the last two hours. Wind really hitting me in the face right now. It's very gusty uh here on we're on top of Terminal 3 parking garage. What we've seen is a ground stop that was in place and has been in place since about 8:30. And according to uh the National Weather Service, they had a wind gust here at the airport uh just before 8:50 that was 68 m an hour. So it was extremely gusty and has been here for the last hour and a half. Now, for those who may be unfamiliar with a ground stop, it has less to do with flights taking off and flights that are in the area and immediately have to land. It has a lot to do with flights that are still on the ground at other airports and are headed with their final destination being Sky Harbor Airport.

[00:02:01]They institute a delay. Uh so, if you're have a family member that maybe is coming to Sky Harbor Airport, they may see a delay if they're still on the ground uh where they're taking off. Now, back to that flight. It's American Airlines flight from Houston to Phoenix that had to land within the last two hours at Luke Air Force Base. Let's take you to some uh radio traffic between the pilot uh and and those here uh at the air traffic controller at Sky Harbor Airport, the back and forth they had.

[00:02:27]Take a listen.

[00:02:29]>> Uh say the uh the fuel you have remaining and the uh number of uh people on board.

[00:02:36]>> Okay, we have 160 people on board. Fuel remaining 6.4. And uh they're telling me that I cannot land at Goodyear. Not capable for our aircraft. So uh any where else would you suggest going, sir?

[00:02:49]>> Um we have like over on the west side there's not a whole lot more because Glendale airport is much is smaller.

[00:02:55]7,150 100 foot wide. You have Luke Air Force Base, but that's an Air Force base. Um if you're an emergency, you're an emergency, but there they have two they have a 10,000 ft 150 foot wide runway at Luke Air Force Base. Okay, let's do Luke Air Force Base and we we we're going to need to or is Scottsdale. Okay.

[00:03:16]>> Um Scottsdale currently, let's see, 08 Z at 17 gust 29 at Scottsdale. Um they're 8,249 ft. They're smaller than Goodyear runway.

[00:03:31]>> Okay. Uh let's go to the Air Force base if you could give us pictures.

[00:03:37]>> Wow. Wow. Yeah. So, it appears they may have had some fuel related issues uh or or maybe there was a combination of fuel combining that with some of the the wind gust that's really coming through here.

[00:03:48]My apologies. That was a United Airlines flight, not an American Airlines flight.

[00:03:52]Just in the last 3 minutes, right at the top of our 10:00 hour, the ground stop ended here at Sky Harbor. Uh so flights wherever they may be in the air uh will be or maybe where they are uh at other airports will now be taking off if their final destination uh is right here at Sky Harbor International Airport. We'll send it back to you guys.

[00:04:10]>> That was remarkable.

[00:04:11]>> It really was.

[00:04:12]>> 160 people on that on that flight and you could hear the pilot's voice.

[00:04:16]Usually they're so calm. He seemed a little rattled. Yeah.

[00:04:19]>> You did a nice job.

[00:04:20]>> Yeah. He was like, "Give me the next option.

[00:04:22]>> It's an emergency." And he's like, "Okay, I'm going for it. I'm going for Luke." That is >> I'll tell you what, Sean, >> that's pretty remarkable. I wonder if the passengers knew at that time, you know, what the situation was.

[00:04:33]>> Why are there F-35s all around, >> right? Right. Who knew?

[00:04:37]>> All right. Well, I'm sure we'll learn more about what happened uh with that, but yeah, that was really interesting sound there, Sean. Thank you so much.

[00:04:44]>> Great reporting.

[00:04:44]>> Yep. All right. Now, we're going to head out to Gabby. She is inside one of our storm trackers. Gabby, you've been out in the storms all evening long. Where are you now, and what are you seeing?

[00:04:58]Well, CBE, we actually made our way out to M6. We were hearing some reports of some power outages. We're along Mesa Drive and Sixth Street. We actually did find some crew to be working on one of the lines right here at Mesa Drive so they've got some uh police cars blocking this area so drivers don't get in the way. I'm going to have a uh Nolan drive around so you guys can see. We saw the crew there shining a light um at one of the there on the lift. Um so it looks like they're looking at that. Uh doesn't appear to see any lines down from what we can see on the ground. So that's good. But you can see just how dark it is. Kind of just this block right here.

[00:05:37]So unsure entire area that may have lost power.

[00:05:41]But if we turn right right here, I noticed uh that it's just completely in the dark this block. So again, it's night time, but you know, normally you would see a few lights on here or there.

[00:05:51]We don't see any street lights on. Uh so block may be out of power for the night, but earlier today uh we were seeing, you know, some really strong wind conditions out in this area. The rain was coming down kind of moderately. Right now, we're getting just a little bit of a sprinkle. Uh was, you know, coming down between light and moderate depending on which part of the valley we were in. And it seemed like it was kind of moving through pretty quickly, but it was those winds that were really strong. We were seeing the trees blowing around. Dust was picking up and that was on the ground or loose really was kind of blowing in the wind in the different parts of the valley we were driving through. Um that kind of has slowed down a little bit. We could feel um at some points while we were driving those gusts of wind were really just kind of blowing the uh we could feel it within the vehicle.

[00:06:45]Um but that kind of has subsided as the night has gone on. But again, so just out here uh those conditions have kind of lightened up. It's stopped raining uh super hard, kind of subsided. We can kind of see I don't know. It's so dark out here. You I don't know if you can make out. Uh you can see all of these tree parts on the ground that have blown around. So uh right now we're just monitoring uh those power outages. We'll check in with APS to see exactly how many people um are, you know, in the dark right now, but we have seen crews out just like here who are getting to work trying to get the lights back on for people who may have been affected by this storm. So, we'll check back in with you guys if we about Thank you so much, Gabby. About 20 or so minutes. The last check we had was 13,000 people without power. That is between APS and SRP combined. So, a lot of folks right now in the dark >> neighborhood to neighborhood it seems like. So, I know there was some outages as well in central Phoenix. So, we have them out in Mesa, we have them in central Phoenix. So, uh you know, hopefully it's not your neighborhood and hopefully the power gets back on >> scattered throughout. All right, let's head over now to meteorologist Lindsay Riley who is tracking the radar for us.

[00:07:54]>> So, Lindsay, I mean I think the big story at this point is wind and I mean and what you know we definitely had some rain, but what caused these winds to be so much stronger than the the monsoon storms we saw, you know, last week?

[00:08:05]Well, the storms were a lot more robust this afternoon over the higher terrain.

[00:08:09]So, when they die, they put out a stronger downdraft and then hence you get that big gust front with the 68 mile hour gust at Sky Harbor, 53 at Mesa Gateway. So, a lot of us saw these very windy conditions on the leading edge. We had dust advisories across parts of Maricopa and Panal counties. And of course, we did pick up some rain as well, but we don't have the threat for any severe thunderstorm warnings overnight. That is off the table. The number of lightning strikes is going down, and the wind is also going to begin to diminish. So, the worst is behind us now in the valley. So, here's a closer look. We have one remaining dust advisory west of downtown. Uh, this goes till 10:15. So, things are improving from a dust perspective. In terms of rain, you can see a few showers out near Buckeye and the White Tanks.

[00:09:02]Those developed on an outflow boundary at about 9:30. They lasted for about 20 minutes and now they're dying down.

[00:09:09]Further out to the west, you can see some pockets of heavier rain out around Aendale. And then Maricopa did have a nice looking thunderstorm which is also dying down. Still some light rain in the vicinity of Apache Junction and Gilbert moving down toward Queen Creek. And we have some nice hefty storms lining I 10.

[00:09:26]These are moving away from the valley.

[00:09:28]So away from Eloy and down toward Tucson up in the high country. Still have some showers around Flagstaff and the Navajo Nation. It's still coming down. Now tomorrow, another active day. We could have additional flooding in northern and eastern Arizona. We'll have more on that flood watch and extreme heat moving into the valley from Thursday to Monday.

[00:09:48]We'll have complete details in just a few minutes.

[00:09:50]>> All right, looking forward to that, Lindsay. Thank you.