Hurricane Hilary

Kermit.de.frog

The now Category 4 hurricane is slowly making it's way N/NW toward Baja California and than on to California with widespread impacts, mostly from flooding, across a good chunk of California, western Arizona, Utah and Nevada.

The last time a tropical storm level event hit southern California was way back in 1939 when 93 people were killed. Of course a completely different era but nonetheless will be interesting to see how these states deal with the impacts of what is highly abnormal for them. Some places could see as much rainfall as what they would usually see in an entire year in the space of 2 days. A lot of moisture coming with this.

Along with several inches of rain wind speeds are expected to still exceed 60mph upon reaching the southwestern US as a Tropical Storm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ1ybawt8D8

The cold cloud tops and well defined eye show it looks healthy at the moment and could yet reach category 5 but it's proximity to landfall and soon getting in to slightly cooler waters will being to degrade it's energy a bit.

https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/sat/satlooper.php?region=09E&product=ir

https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/sat/satlooper.php?region=09E&product=wv_mid

Think it's worth keeping an eye on this one.

Rikand

So strange to see an east pacific hurricane angling in towards the mainland. Usually they end up spinning out to sea

PokeHerKing

San Diego/LA to take the brunt of the flooding according NHC. With the Atlantic finally starting to fire up didn't even notice the East Pacific!

One to watch for sure.

snowstreams

It will be interesting to see what transformation happens in death valley and other desert areas after all the rain, 4+ inches could cause a lot of growth. Apparently the desert can turn into hills covered in flowers. That could lead to fires down the line next year though.

M.T. Cranium

An interesting observation is how cool daytime temperatures have been all day in Nevada from the extensive cloud shield ahead of the hurricane. Tonopah, northwest of Las Vegas, has been in the 13-15 C range all day (normal is about 32 C) and Ely in eastern Nevada around 17 C (normal 27 C). Las Vegas has been held to about 25 C (normal around 40 C).

We were already planning a trip down to Nevada and Utah for October to catch a view of an annular solar eclipse on Oct 13 (moon not quite large enough near its apogee to cover the entire disk). May add Death Valley to this trip as by then temperatures are reasonably moderate. I am pretty sure Death Valley's max today will be a record low max, will look into that later when the stats are posted. There's another regular total eclipse in Texas on April 8, 2024.

According to something I read yesterday, this is only about the 8th occasion where the centre of a Pacific tropical storm circulation has been over any part of California since records began in the mid-19th century. A cat-1 or 2 storm came inland near San Diego in 1858 and there was another fairly strong landfall in 1939, some more minor ones in the 1970s. More frequently if they make landfall at all, Pacific hurricanes swerve inland over the lower Baja peninsula and strike mainland Mexico then remnants move into Arizona or New Mexico. Others like Patricia 2015 move into central Mexico, cross the mainland and re-emerge into the Gulf of Mexico. That event released a lot of heat into the temperate regions in late October 2015 which was followed by widespread record warmth in Nov-Dec 2015. The strong post-tropical circulation of Patricia died out over the Great Lakes region.