Arizona floods: Dramatic videos show car washed away, family rescued atop vehicle

Global News shows dramatic footage from Arizona as monsoon rainwater carrying debris from a wildfire burn scar flowed through the streets in Flagstaff, for the third day in a row on July 15.

Video captured by a Flagstaff resident Taylor Landy shows a car being washed away in the floodwaters on Wednesday.

And, an Arizona family was rescued on Wednesday from a car trapped in fast-moving floodwaters in Catalina. Fire crews safely carried a man and his two daughters from the roof of a vehicle surrounded by a raging flood.

Arizona is a state in the Western United States, grouped in the Southwestern and occasionally Mountain subregions. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona shares the 4 Corners region with Utah to the north, Colorado to the northeast, and New Mexico to the east; its other neighboring states are Nevada and California to the west and the Mexican states of Sonora and Baja California to the south and southwest.

A "monsoon" is traditionally a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation, but is now used to describe seasonal changes in atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with annual latitudinal oscillation of the Intertropical Convergence Zone between its limits to the north and south of the equator. Usually, the so-called term "monsoon" is used to refer to the rainy phase of a seasonally changing pattern, although technically there is also a dry phase. The term is also sometimes used to describe locally heavy but short-term rains.

The major monsoon systems of the world consist of the West African and Asia-Australian monsoons. The inclusion of the North American Monsoon and South American monsoon with incomplete wind reversal has been debated.

The term was first used in English in British India and neighbouring countries to refer to the big seasonal winds blowing from the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea in the southwest bringing heavy rainfall to the area.