As Hurricane Hilary heads north, Southern California and Mexico are bracing for a rare and powerful storm that could produce dangerous flash flooding and sustained winds that have not been seen for decades.
Residents are racing to fill sandbags and fuel up generators before extreme weather arrives, and emergency officials are warning that roads may be inundated and setting up evacuation centers.
The Category 4 hurricane is so unusual that it has prompted the National Hurricane Center to issue a tropical storm watch for California for the first time in its history. Hilary is currently projected to make landfall in Baja California on Sunday and move northward as a tropical storm near San Diego and across the deserts and mountains east of Los Angeles — though its path could still veer elsewhere.
In California, the desert and mountain communities are of particular concern. The National Weather Service warned of five to eight inches of rain for the Coachella Valley, about 120 miles east of Los Angeles. The tropical storm could force numerous evacuations and rescues, as well as deadly runoff that may “rage down valleys while increasing susceptibility to rockslides and mudslides,” the agency said.
“The risk in the southeastern deserts is genuinely alarming,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, referring to areas such as Joshua Tree National Park in the southeast part of the state. “We’re talking, in some cases, it will be multiple years’ worth of rainfall.”
As of Friday, Hilary was about 350 miles south of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, causing particular worry for the Baja California peninsula. Hilary poses a threat to all of the Mexican state of Baja California, home to 3.8 million residents, local authorities said on Friday during a meeting in Tijuana with reporters and other officials. Catalino Zavala, the state’s secretary general, said that 80 temporary shelters would be available to receive up to 9,000 people.
“It is a little bit more serious than we expected,” said Armando Ayala Robles, mayor of the city of Ensenada.
Of special concern are the rocky island of Cedros, off the west coast of the state and home to about 3,000 people, and San Quintín, an agricultural center for the region that has slowly emerged as a coastal tourist destination.
Hilary will dump up to 10 inches of rain on the state of Baja California from Saturday to Monday — an extremely unusual amount given that the state, known for its dry weather, typically receives around eight inches throughout the year, the authorities said.
Mexico’s national meteorological service predicted that given the rainfall and wind gusts of up to 62 miles per hour, flooding and landslides were expected to occur. Power outages and loss of communications are also likely to happen.
The Mexican Army has deployed nearly 14,000 soldiers to the city of Mexicali, just south of the U.S. border, and the states of Baja California Sur, Jalisco and Colima — which expect up to six inches of rain on Friday even without the hurricane making landfall there. More troops were deployed in other states in western and central Mexico, where intense rains were forecast.
In San Diego County, the southernmost part of California, plans were in place to keep lifeguards on duty throughout the weekend because of dangerous surf conditions, and extra emergency personnel had been tapped to address flooding.
“There are people who live in the canyons and low-lying areas, and we want to be prepared,” said David Gerboth, an assistant fire chief with the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department.
In Orange County to the north, residents were trying to make sense of the fact that a tropical storm was heading their way — a phenomenon that few Californians alive today have ever encountered. The last time one reached landfall in Southern California was in 1939, flooding Los Angeles and killing nearly 100 people.
Under blue skies in downtown Laguna Beach on Friday morning, Suzanne Barber was stacking a dozen sandbags outside her art gallery on the Pacific Coast Highway, across the street from Main Beach. Fresh on her mind was Hurricane Dora, which never made landfall in Hawaii but amplified the winds that contributed to the wildfire disaster on Maui this month.
“I can’t believe it is happening,” she said. “After seeing what happened in Lahaina — that tropical storm — it really frightened me. I just want to be prepared and not take it lightly.”
She added that she received a text from concerned relatives in Tennessee asking if she was going to evacuate. “I said, ‘What?’”
Major League Baseball announced on Friday that it had rescheduled three games that were supposed to be played on Sunday in Los Angeles, San Diego and Anaheim. Those games will be played on Saturday afternoon instead.
Experts say there is almost no risk that the storm will actually touch down in California as a hurricane, because the cool ocean temperatures in this part of the Pacific and the stable atmosphere are not conducive. Hilary is expected to weaken to a tropical storm by the time it reaches Southern California. Still, the effects of such a storm could be devastating.
With potential for significant rainfall, there is heightened concern about the canyons and fire-burn areas where rapid debris and mud flow could occur. Firefighters are also bracing for rain-related rescues and an increase in accidents.
The office of emergency management in Los Angeles County said residents should make a plan for their families, stock up on supplies and stay informed of the news.
“Los Angeles is no stranger to crazy events and phenomena, it’s the nature of where we’re at,” said Emily Montanez, the associate director of the agency.
Ms. Montanez said that over the last two days, her office had been coordinating with county departments as well as leaders in all 88 cities in Los Angeles County. Law enforcement and fire staff have been augmented, and emergency medical workers have been assigned to incident management teams. If needed, beaches, parks and hiking trails and other public spaces may be closed.
“Everybody’s on standby,” she said.
Vik Jolly, Maggie Miles and Candice Reed contributed reporting from Southern California. Elda Cantú contributed reporting from Ensenada, Mexico. Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed reporting from Mexico City.
Corina Knoll is the Los Angeles bureau chief. She writes features about California and covers breaking news. Previously, she spent more than a decade with The Los Angeles Times, where she contributed to two Pulitzer Prizes.
Los Angeles Under Tropical Storm Warning as Hurricane Hilary Approaches
The National Hurricane Center on Friday evening issued its first-ever tropical storm warning for Southern California, including downtown Los Angeles, as a powerful Category 4 hurricane moved through the Pacific Ocean toward Mexico and the United States.
The storm, Hurricane Hilary, was about 260 miles west-southwest of the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula as of 2 a.m. Saturday in Los Angeles, the Hurricane Center said in an advisory. Meteorologists have said that the storm may cause “life-threatening and potentially catastrophic flooding” in Baja and the Southwestern United States, starting this weekend.
The warning in effect early Saturday indicated that tropical storm conditions were possible within the coverage area over the next 36 hours. The area stretched from the California-Mexico border to Point Mugu, around 40 miles west of Santa Monica by road, and includes Catalina Island.
Hilary had sustained winds near 130 miles per hour, the Hurricane Center said. Tropical cyclones that have sustained winds of 39 m.p.h. earn a name. Once winds reach 74 m.p.h., a storm becomes a hurricane, and, at 111 m.p.h., it becomes a major hurricane.
A number of events in the Los Angeles area this weekend, including a Major League Soccer match and several Major League Baseball games, have been rescheduled because of the approaching storm.
Hilary formed as a tropical storm off the coast of Manzanillo, Mexico, on Wednesday and began moving west-northwest toward Baja California as it strengthened.
Hilary is expected to weaken but remain a hurricane as it approaches the west coast of the Baja California Peninsula on Saturday. It will then most likely become a tropical storm before reaching Southern California by Sunday night.
Hilary’s exact landfall likely will not make much of a difference when it comes to the expected hazards in the region, meteorologists said.
Hilary will bring up to six inches of rain, with isolated amounts up to 10 inches, across portions of the Baja California Peninsula through Sunday night, with the possibility of flash flooding.
Portions of Southern California and Southern Nevada will record similar rainfall totals through Tuesday morning, which could lead to “dangerous and locally catastrophic flooding,” forecasters said.
A flood watch was issued for much of Southern California, including Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange, San Bernardino, San Diego and Ventura Counties. Other areas across the West can expect a few inches of rain.
Forecasters said that strong winds would occur ahead of the storm’s center.
Residents in Southern California raced to prepare sandbags and fill generators ahead of Hilary’s arrival as emergency officials prepared evacuation centers. Some expressed particular concern about the impact on mountain and desert regions.
The National Weather Service said runoff could “rage down valleys while increasing susceptibility to rockslides and mudslides.”
Mexico’s government issued a hurricane warning for the Baja California peninsula from Punta Abreojos to Cabo San Quintin. A hurricane watch is also in effect for the Baja California Peninsula’s west coast north of Cabo San Quintin to Ensenada.
A tropical storm warning and watch were also issued for multiple regions of the peninsula and mainland Mexico.
The Mexican army mobilized thousands of troops in anticipation of severe damage to infrastructure.
The Eastern Pacific hurricane season has been active this summer, but most of these recent storms have tracked west toward Hawaii, including Hurricane Dora, which helped enhance extreme winds that led to the devastating wildfires on Maui.
It is “exceedingly rare” for a tropical storm to come off the ocean and make landfall in California, said Stefanie Sullivan, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in San Diego. The only tropical cyclone to truly make landfall in Southern California was an unnamed storm in 1939 that made landfall in Long Beach, she said.
However, storms have come close or weakened before coming ashore, still causing flooding and dangerous winds, like Kay, a post-tropical cyclone, last year. Sometimes storms even move across the state from Mexico; in 1997, Hurricane Nora made landfall in Baja California before moving inland and reaching Arizona as a tropical storm.
Hurricane season in the Eastern Pacific began on May 15, two weeks before the Atlantic season started. The seasons run until Nov. 30.
Complicating things in the Pacific this year is the development of El Niño, the intermittent, large-scale weather pattern that can have wide-ranging effects on weather around the world.
An average Eastern Pacific hurricane season has 15 named storms, eight hurricanes and four major hurricanes. The Central Pacific typically has four or five named storms that develop or move across the basin annually.
There is solid consensus among scientists that hurricanes are becoming more powerful because of climate change. Although there might not be more named storms overall, the likelihood of major hurricanes is increasing.
Climate change is also affecting the amount of rain that storms can produce. In a warming world, the air can hold more moisture, which means a named storm can hold and produce more rainfall, as Hurricane Harvey did in Texas in 2017, when some areas received more than 40 inches of rain in less than 48 hours.
Researchers have also found that storms have slowed down over the past few decades.
When a storm slows down over water, it increases the amount of moisture it can absorb. When the storm slows over land, it increases the amount of rain that falls over a single location, as with Hurricane Dorian in 2019, which slowed to a crawl over the northwestern Bahamas, resulting in 22.84 inches of rain at Hope Town over the storm’s duration.
These are just a few ways that climate change is most likely affecting these storms. Research shows there may be other effects as well, including storm surge, rapid intensification and a broader reach of tropical systems.
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