Hurricane Hilary Positioned for Rare California Landfall, Bringing ‘Catastrophic’ Flooding to Desert

The US state of California and neighboring Mexican states could be in for a major tropical cyclone in the coming days - a rarity for the arid region, which typically receives only a couple of inches of rain per year.

Meteorologists upgraded Hilary to a Category 3 hurricane late Thursday, making it the eighth named storm in the Eastern Pacific hurricane season this year. and is expected to keep strengthening into a major hurricane by Friday evening

The storm is positioned about 340 miles southwest of Mexico’s Colima State and tracking to the northwest at about 14 miles per hour. It has sustained 125-mile-per-hour winds, with hurricane-force winds extending outward some 60 miles. Tropical storm-grade winds were recorded some 290 miles from the storm's eye.

4PM CDT Wednesday, August 16 Key Messages for Tropical Storm #Hilary. https://t.co/BGf3hweIju pic.twitter.com/jcQSEp5YvY

— NHC Eastern Pacific (@NHC_Pacific) August 16, 2023

At present, the US National Hurricane Center’s projections for Hurricane Hilary having it slowly hooking to the north and skimming along the coast of Mexico’s Baja California State on Sunday, possibly making landfall during that time or later impacting the US state of California on Monday in the Los Angeles area.

Some tracks have it passing further to the east, coming up the Baja California peninsula and impacting California’s interior and neighboring US states like Arizona and Nevada.

Hurricane Hilary will bring 2-3 years of rain in 3 days to the deserts. Catastrophic flooding is possible.

Get ready, California. https://t.co/SYKGk3utr7 pic.twitter.com/k9pxnD7j7n

— Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) August 17, 2023

“There’s a lot of uncertainty with the storm track and the intensity of the storm, but we will likely see some impacts,” Eric Boldt, the warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service in the LA suburb of Oxnard, told local media. “We have to be prepared for the potential for very heavy rain, very strong winds, storm surge, large waves … This is a potentially high-impact event.”

Regardless of its precise route, much of the arid region is due to receive several inches of rain, with some areas potentially receiving as much as 5 inches. For the deserts of the region, that is equivalent to several years’ worth of rain in a couple of hours or days, leading experts to predict “catastrophic flooding.”

Hurricanes striking the US west coast are rare, as those that venture so far north tend to be carried out to sea by the prevailing winds.

The last major storm to do so landed in Long Beach in September 1939 and was dubbed El Cordonazo or The Lash of St. Francis, a nickname given to southwesterly tropical winds along the Central American coast that are notorious for bringing bad weather near the time of the Feast of St. Francis on October 4.

The 1939 storm killed nearly 50 people on land, with just as many declared lost at sea.

Boldt warned the hurricane’s proximity could bring powerful winds to the entire region, which much like what happened in Hawaii last week, could become potent fans for wildfires.

A study published in the journal Science Advances on Tuesday found that hurricanes are becoming deadlier. The findings determined that between 1988 and 2019, an estimated 20,000 people died in the continental United States from direct or indirect causes of Atlantic hurricanes within one month of the storm’s strike. The deaths became more frequent after 2004.

However, the study left out Caribbean islands controlled by the US, such as Puerto Rico, a frequent victim of hurricanes like Maria, which killed several thousand people when it made direct landfall as a strong Category-4 storm.