‘It just was this huge, huge cloud of dust’: Boise-area residents react to giant dust storm

Treasure Valley residents received a dust storm emergency alert shortly after 7 p.m. Tuesday, and videos of huge clouds of dust were quickly posted to social media.

Amberine Witgenstein, of Caldwell, recorded a video a few minutes after 7 p.m.

“I got that emergency alert on my phone and then I popped up and looked out my window and (the dust storm) was happening,” she told the Idaho Statesman by phone. “(The storm) had literally happened at the same time as that emergency alert came out.”

Though it is often windy where she lives, Witgenstein said this storm was unusual.

“It just was this huge, huge cloud of dust, and it was pretty severe,” she said. “Super tall. … It was taller than the power lines that are out there.”

Barry Barner, who moved to Eagle a couple of months ago, said he’s never experienced a wind storm like this.

“It was howling really good,” he said.

He said a house is being built next to his, and that the construction garbage from a bin at the site “just started flying past our house into the lake” a few minutes after he received the emergency alert. He began filming the wind storm.

Barner said his power flickered for a few seconds.

Other residents of the Treasure Valley were startled by the storm, and wanted it to end.

“(A)nyone know when this storm is supposed to end i am not liking it one bit,” commented one user in the Idaho Weather Watchers Facebook page.