A spring severe weather outbreak with damaging tornadoes usually grabs most of our attention.
But one year ago today on March 4, 2025, severe thunderstorms weren't the most bizarre thing we saw in an outbreak.
Yes, 30 tornadoes and over 500 reports of severe thunderstorm winds, wind damage and hail accompanied athree-day siege of severe weatherlast year across the South from Texas to the mid-Atlantic states from March 3-5.
But what captured many meteorologists' attention on the afternoon of March 4 was a massive plume of dust driven by high winds across the Plains fromsouthern Kansasto Texas.
What was a bit more unusual was the lofted dust reached as far east as the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex that afternoon, turning skies a surreal Martian brown.
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From March 4-6, more than 1,300 reports of high wind gusts and another 335 reports of wind damage not from thunderstorms were received by the National Weather Service from the Plains to the East Coast.
And that was only the first such widespread wind event of the month.
Two other such events including severe thunderstorms occurred in parts of the country in mid-March, then late March.
By month's end,more than 2,000 reportsof severe thunderstorm winds and wind damage were received by the National Weather Service, a record for any March since 1950. The NWS also issued 164 high wind warnings in March 2025, most of any month since 2005.
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him onBluesky,X (formerly Twitter)andFacebook.
