Western desert communities mop up after summer storms

Desert communities in Arizona and California were cleaning up after summer storms unleashed muddy torrents into roadways and toppled huge trees into homes and vehicles.
A man in Los Angeles County was hoisted to safety by a helicopter when his pickup truck was surrounded by a river of muddy water.
Residents of the Phoenix metro area surveyed damage in their neighborhoods after high winds and heavy downbursts of rain downed scores of huge, old trees Thursday evening.
Jesse Thomas of All About Trees said Friday the phone at his Phoenix tree-removal service was ringing non-stop.
He spoke as his crew dealt with an 80-foot tall, 20-ton Aleppo pine that crashed into a house from a neighboring property.

"It's been a few years since we have seen a tree this big come down," Thomas said.

In Las Vegas, officials yesterday said seven people had to be rescued and another one was still missing after they were swept away by rushing flood waters in two washes.
Clark County Fire Department deputy chief Jeff Buchanan said emergency personnel were still searching for the person who went missing in a wash where another one was rescued and then transported to a hospital. He said six people were also rescued from a wash behind the Linq casino-hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.

The summer storms in the US Southwest are known as monsoons, a term many associate with the Indian subcontinent and the Bay of Bengal.
A monsoon is simply a reversal of winds, National Weather Service forecaster Travis Wilson said. In the American Southwest, that means a switch of the region's wintertime westerly winds for the summertime's southerly and southeasterly flow bringing in moisture from Mexico's Gulf of California.
"With all that heat in the summer, and the clear skies, the moisture gets lifted up into the atmosphere and then we get thunderstorms and a lot of rain," said Wilson. "A lot of wind, too."

In the Phoenix area, the storms flooded streets, delayed flights and temporarily knocked out power to thousands of people. Dozens of utility company workers on Friday were replacing broken power poles and repairing downed lines.