On the afternoon of Oct. 6, 2022, a massive dust storm rose in the drought-parched Sonoran Desert just southeast of California's Salton Sea. Wind, gusting at more than 60 miles per hour, whipped the desert floor into a vaulting curtain of sediment that swept north across the Imperial Valley, engulfing low-slung agricultural towns like El Centro and Brawley in a mantle of suffocating dust. The storm knocked out power, downed trees, and shrouded the region in an eerie amber haze. The Environmental Protection Agency's Air Quality Index, which considers scores above 150 unhealthy, and those above 300 hazardous, spiked to 659 at a monitoring station on the western shore of the Salton Sea. And as the avalanche of dust bore down, Trianna Morales, a 31-year-old baker at the local Vons supermarket in Brawley, looked on with dread. "Oh my God," Morales thought. "We're gonna get sick."
