NATURE
When could Hurricane Hilary hit Southern California?
The recently strengthened Category 4 is expected to make history as the first tropical storm to make landfall in California since 1939.
California is facing a usually unlikely occurrence next week; a tropical storm battering its shores. Hurricane Hilary is currently swirling over Baja California off the coast of Mexico but is fast sweeping north, bringing heaving winds and cascading rain .
Currently, Hilary has winds up to 140 miles per hour. The hurricane will approach the peninsula on Friday though is expected to decrease in strength once it hits the US and will turn into a tropical storm.
“The threat of significant wind impacts continues to increase for northern portions of the Baja California Peninsula and the Southwestern United States, especially in areas of mountainous terrain,” the hurricane center said Thursday night.
Forecasters predict that the Southwest will experience significant rainfall starting on Friday that will continue until early next week. California and Nevada are likely to experience rainfall ranging from 3 to 5 inches, while isolated areas could even receive up to 10 inches.
The last time a tropical storm made land in California was 1939 and a hurricane has never struck the state.
An ease to the drought in California?
The rains could ease what has been a very dry three years in California. In recent years, the western US experienced severe drought conditions, exacerbated by reduced snowpack, decreased precipitation, and higher temperatures. A quarter of the country remains in drought conditions.
“Multiple years’ worth of precipitation could potentially fall in some of the driest parts of California,” as a result of the storm, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles, told CNN.
Expected flash floods may be dangerous with the sudden deluge. The very dry ground will be poor at absorbing the water, inevitably leading to treacherous conditions under-foot.