PALM SPRINGS, California – Tropical Storm Hilary made its historic arrival in California on Sunday with forecasters warning of possibly catastrophic flooding after the storm pummelled Mexico’s Baja California peninsula with heavy rains.
One person died in Mexico amid reports of flash flooding in the peninsula, where some roads were swept away and images on social media showed raging torrents gushing down city streets that had turned into rivers.
California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency for much of Southern California, with flash flood warnings in effect throughout a region that is more accustomed to drought.
Hundreds of flights in San Diego, Las Vegas and Los Angeles were cancelled, and professional sporting matches rescheduled. The Los Angeles Unified School District and San Diego Unified School District cancelled classes for Monday.
San Diego County, just north of the Mexican border, braced for its first-ever recorded tropical storm. Throughout Southern California, some desert and mountain areas could receive a year’s worth of rain in one day. Some areas also could experience tornadoes.
Floodwaters raced through the concrete banks of the Los Angeles River, which normally contains barely a trickle. In Ocotillo, a desert town about 145km east of San Diego, rock slides brought boulders down on Interstate 8, causing traffic delays on the highway to Arizona.
Hilary would be the first recorded tropical strength storm ever to hit San Diego County, and such a storm is exceedingly rare for Southern California. Nora hit a remote part of Imperial County to the east in 1997, and in 1939, before storms were named, another came ashore in Long Beach to the north, in Los Angeles County.
Mountain and desert areas could get 12cm to 25cm of rain, the forecasters said.
“In some places in the desert, that’s a year’s worth,” Mr Alex Tardy, a senior meteorologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in San Diego, told a news briefing. “The normal rainfall in Southern California and San Diego is nothing in August. So, a very unusual event is unfolding here.”
Areas such as Palm Springs, California, which typically gets around 11.7cm of rain in an entire year, could receive about 15cm to 25 cm from this one storm. California’s Death Valley area, which receives only around 5.6cm of rain a year, could receive about 7.6cm to 10cm from this event.
Amid all the storm preparation, a 5.1-magnitude earthquake rocked the Ventura County city of Ojai, about 130km north-west of Los Angeles. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
Storm Hilary, which made landfall earlier in the day in the northern part of the Baja California peninsula, has been weakening over the last 48 hours. But it is still set to be the wettest storm ever to hit the US Southwest, according to Mr Zack Taylor, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service (NWS).
https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMifWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnN0cmFpdHN0aW1lcy5jb20vd29ybGQvdW5pdGVkLXN0YXRlcy9zdG9ybS1oaWxhcnktdG8tcHVtbWVsLXVzLXNvdXRoLXdlc3QtYWZ0ZXItc29ha2luZy1iYWphLWNhbGlmb3JuaWEtcGVuaW5zdWxh0gEA?oc=5
2023-08-20 23:10:00Z
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