If people vote with their feet, then at least a few people last year saw Arizona as a land of opportunity.

Salt River Project went live on a 19 megawatt solar plant in Queen Creek last week, raising the company’s retail electrical needs from renewable sources to 10 percent.

During coverage of the massive dust storms that have recently hit the Valley, you might have picked up on a new word -- haboob.

No one likes a dirty Fish Bowl.

The “mild” temperatures of July — during what weather officials have described as a more active monsoon compared to the last two years — might sound similar to the old Alka-Seltzer commercial: “Oh, what a relief it is.”

PHOENIX (AP) — Another dust storm and monsoon blew through the Phoenix metropolitan area and flooded some streets in Anthem and along Interstate 17.

So by now most of us in the Valley of the Sun are over being steamed — I’m talking about indoors — that point guard Steve Nash was traded by the Phoenix Suns to the locally hated Los Angeles Lakers for four high-up draft picks in the next three years.

The Haboob Haiku Challenge has been narrowed to the top 15 entries as one week remains for Arizonans to vote on their favorite bit of wordplay about Arizona’s dust storms.

You can’t really blame local TV weather forecasters for playing up the Arizona monsoon.

You can’t really blame local TV weather forecasters for playing up the Arizona monsoon.

Are you ready?

Arizona transportation officials are getting the message out about dust storm safety — in precisely 17 syllables.

Are you ready?

A Valley-based board game company has turned the story of Jacob Waltz and his famed gold mine into a board game called “Legend of the Lost Dutchman.”

If you’ve lived in the East Valley for a while, you’ve probably heard the story of the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine, the long-lost treasure trove believed to be somewhere in the Superstition Mountains near Apache Junction. Now, Crash Games, LLC, a Phoenix board game design and publishing company has created a game based on the mine.

“Our ‘crack’ weather folks sure sent out the alert early about our ‘mini-haboob’ Wednesday. Asleep at the wheel, caught them napping. Earlier reports were ‘possible chance of rain, about 5 percent.’ Oops?”

The haboob-riddled summer of 2011 may be outdone this year if the Valley’s drought conditions don’t make measurable improvements, one Arizona air quality expert said.

2011 in the East Valley was marked by political upset, a slow economic recovery, and the mother of all dust storms. Now as the year comes to a close, one of Arizona’s most powerful politicians sits on the sidelines, America’s so-called toughest sheriff is more embattled than ever, a sad chapter in the valley’s history has ended with an execution, and the gap between haves and have-nots is ever widening. Oh, and we still continue to be fascinated by something called a haboob.