BY GINA MARTINEZ
UPDATED ON: AUGUST 18, 2023 / 8:16 PM / CBS NEWS (cbsnews.com)
Hurricane Hilary is expected to hit Southern California as a tropical storm, bringing heavy rainfall as early as this weekend after it makes its way up Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula. The storm prompted officials at the National Hurricane Center on Friday to issue a tropical storm watch for most of Southern California.
It marks the first time a tropical storm watch has ever been issued in the region.
Forecasters said the storm is expected to produce 3 to 6 inches of rainfall, with maximum amounts of 10 inches, across portions of Baja California through Sunday night, with the possibility of flash flooding. The same rain totals are forecast for parts of Southern California and southern Nevada, according to the hurricane center.
There will likely be “damaging wind gusts,” especially at higher elevations, in the area, and swells along the coast, Greg Postel, a hurricane and storm specialist at the Weather Channel, told CBS News.
Hurricane watches and warnings were in effect for parts of the Baja California Peninsula, and tropical storm watches were in effect for parts of mainland Mexico and nearly all of Southern California, including the area stretching from the California-Mexico border in San Diego County, to north Los Angeles County, as well as for California’s Catalina Island. A tropical storm watch means that tropical storm conditions are possible within 48 hours.
Where is Hurricane Hilary’s projected path?
As of Friday evening, Hurricane Hilary was located about 310 miles southwest of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, with maximum sustained winds of 130 mph, making it a “major” Category 4, the hurricane center said, adding that it is “large and powerful.”
The storm was moving northwest at 12 mph, with a turn toward the north-northwest expected Friday night, according to the center.
In its latest advisory, the NHC warned of “life-threatening and potentially catastrophic flooding likely over much of Baja California and the Southwestern U.S. this weekend and early next week.”
When will Hurricane Hilary hit the coast of California?
The center of the storm will approach Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula over the weekend, the hurricane center said, and weaken to a tropical storm before hitting California. It is set to impact the southwestern U.S. with heavy rainfall, possibly bringing “rare and dangerous flooding,” according to the center.
“It is rare — indeed nearly unprecedented in the modern record — to have a tropical system like this move through Southern California,” Postel told CBS News.
The NCH has forecast that Hilary is expected to get close to the Baja California Peninsula’s west coast this weekend, and will reach Southern California by Sunday night, likely as a tropical storm.
A tropical storm is defined as having winds of at least 39 mph, according to the National Weather Service.
The last time Southern California was hit by a tropical storm was in 1939, before storms were given names, CBS News senior weather and climate producer David Parkinson said. Several storms that had been hurricanes or tropical storms have impacted the state since then, but they had weakened to sub-tropical systems by that time, Parkinson noted.
The projected path of the storm showed it could make landfall anywhere from the Baja California Peninsula to as far north as Santa Barbara, California. One model showed the heaviest rain hitting the Palm Springs area after the storm makes landfall.
“But if this storm track moves just 40 miles to the west … now you take all of this heavy rain … and you shift it now into portions of Orange County. You shift it into portions of the [Inland Empire] that are very well populated,” Parkinson said.
Either situation would be cause for concern, Parkinson noted. The desert terrain around Palm Springs would not be able to handle the amount of rain expected and, if the track shifts west, the areas scorched by recent wildfires would also be inundated.
Hilary is likely to produce landslides and mudslides in certain areas recently burned by wildfires and storm surges along parts of the southern Baja Peninsula and the Gulf of California coast, the Weather Channel reports.
“You’re looking at a winter-like storm now in the summer in places that are not used to this amount of rain,” Parkinson said.