Hello haboob. Goodbye Anza-Borrego

A spectacle of nature briefly materialized in San Diego County's eastern deserts Thursday when a 'haboob' dust storm wafted through the area, reducing visibility to less than a mile.

Dust storms aren't uncommon during the summer. But Thursday's event was unusually large, and it was caused by the same mass of unstable air that produced thunder and lightning at the coast on Wednesday, says the National Weather Service.

The air mass flowed into Imperial County on Thursday, triggering afternoon thunderstorms whose powerful winds flowed west, kicking up high flying dust. Some of the dust moved into the Coachella Valley, and some invaded Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, part of which covers East County. This video was taken by the HPWREN system from Toro Peak in Riverside County. The camera, pointed south, shows dust moving into the Coachella Valley.

"The thunderstorms out there are usually pretty localized, but this one caused a big outflow of air," says Jimmy Taeger, a weather service forecaster.

Such winds can generate towering walls of dust, or a haboob. The dust storms more typically occur in Arizona, where the dust gets thick enough to slow the pace of life in places like Phoenix.