It’s monsoon season over here (pronounced mon-soooooooooooooooooooooooooooon), and that means an occasional break from the normal sunny and hot weather pattern.

Somehow, we made it through all last year without experiencing a Dust Storm. This year we’ve already had two.

For those of you not familiar, a dust storm is kind of like a blizzard. (The weather kind, not the $9.95 for a small at Dairy Queen kind.) The main difference is that instead of snow and ice blowing around, you get dirt and sand.

Basically, there is a brown haze over everything. And it sounds like it is raining, but that’s just the larger dust particles (more like small pebbles) hitting the windows.

We happened to be driving during one of the storms, and I had about 300 feet of visibility on the interstate.

Below, some pictures of dust storms in Phoenix from AZCentral’s best monsoon pics slide show.

Also, we had a huge storm last night. We had thunder so loud that it repeatedly set off multiple car alarms in the neighborhood. It was awesome.