Got itchy today and went on a spur of the moment drive. These drives usually go for 300-400 miles. Wanted to check the gas mileage of my new (or nearly new) car and see how the chances were for some rain. Our monsoon season (yes they call it a 'Monsoon Season' now and it last from 15 June until 30 September, rain or no rain. Up to about two years ago the monsoon started when we had three consecutive days with a dew point of 55F or higher. Went to Globe and checked out the sky to the East. There were some build-ups in the distance. Radar and satellite imagery shows some precipitation in West Texas, New Mexico and over Old Mexico. From Globe I went south to San Manuel and saw a lot of build-up over the Catalina Mountains near Tucson. Got into some very heavy rain, the temperature dropped from 102F (39C) to 63F (17C) just like that and I was worried about my windshield. A couple of times the visibility went to zero. I couldn't have pulled over if I had wanted to. Luckily, this lasted only a few seconds. On the way back to Phoenix (about 100 miles from Catalina) I realized that the wind started to blow and clouds of dust developed. I was going with the wind, along the Pinal Pioneer Parkway. By the time I got to Florence the wind caught up with me. Signs were blown about and I was worried about the paint job of the car. Stopped for a while before I continued. Changed the way I came back to Phoenix to minimize blowing sand damage to the paint job. By the time I reached Phoenix the sun was out, temperature was 107F, but the dust warning and visibility signs were up on the freeways. By the time I came home, on the West side of Phoenix I took this picture (two frame pano) of the approaching dust storm. This is looking toward the South, but dust was to the East, Southeast and spreading toward the north also. These dust clouds are several 1000 feet high and are the result of the storms down in Tucson. It is the outflow of Cumulonimbus clouds and it took the dust cloud about two hours to make the 100 miles. For the last two years or so they are now called 'Haboob' (Arabic for Strong Wind), before that they were just dust storms. This picture was taken on 16 June 2012 at 6:44PM, Sig...