Owed to cooler ocean temps and a high-pressure system, storms rarely hold enough strength to make landfall as a tropical storm or a hurricane in California.
Hurricane Hilary reached Category 4 strength off Mexico’s Pacific coast Friday and is likely to return to tropical storm status as it nears Southern California this weekend.
Hilary had sustained winds near 145 mph early Friday, and was expected to strengthen a bit more before starting to weaken. It was expected to still be a hurricane when approaching Mexico’s Baja California peninsula on Saturday night, and a tropical storm when approaching Southern California on Sunday.
Among those spots is Death Valley, California, the hottest place on Earth. Death Valley typically receives about 2 inches of rain across an entire year, according to NWS data. Moisture from Hilary could dump enough rain to give Death Valley one to two years worth of rainfall in a single day. And Las Vegas could get 2 to 4 inches of rain; it typically averages 3.75 inches of rain a year.
“Hilary is a large and very intense hurricane that is embedded in a very moist air mass, with midlevel relative humidity around 80%. The storm is towing an impressive amount of moisture northward with it, and the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere may approach all-time records in some locations along or near Hilary’s path,” said researchers at Yale University’s Climate Connections.
Read: Homeowners can check a property’s flood, heat and wildfire risk for free with this high-powered app Flash floods can also occur even if no rain has fallen, such as after a levee or dam has failed, or after a sudden release of water by a debris or ice jam. What’s more, the inability of some municipal storm sewers to keep up with the water removal can aggravate the situation, and that’s been especially true as the nation’s infrastructure has aged.
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