Dust storms during US 'monsoon season'

Yes, in the US, meteorologists think that their country too has a monsoon season. Traditionally, a monsoon is defined as a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation, but the term is now increasingly used to describe seasonal changes in atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with the asymmetric heating of land and sea.

The major monsoon systems of the world consist of the West African and Asia-Australian monsoons. The inclusion of the North and South American monsoons with incomplete wind reversal has been debated. The summertime thermal lows in the Americas are far less extensive and influential than those in Asia and Africa, which means thunderstorms and strong winds. They both can appear to come out of nowhere.

Still, the American National Weather Service is working to keep Interstate-10 from turning deadly during the monsoon. For the first time, it is monitoring the corridor between Tucson and Phoenix with a potentially life-saving network of dust storm detectors. Dust storms are notorious in the summer months along I-10. They often come from desert areas and unplanted farm fields, and can pick up without warning.

The National Weather Service is to strategically place a network of (just) eight sensors between Tucson and Phoenix, a distance of more than 170 kilometers. These monitors will measure particulate matter to act as early warning indicators. As soon as there is a spike in the data from one of these monitoring sites, a dust storm warning can be issued alerting the public to the potentially deadly scenario.