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SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — Tropical Storm Hilary drenched the American Southwest before fading Monday to a mere rainstorm, leaving communities from the Pacific Coast to inland Nevada with a substantial cleanup effort but no reported deaths in the United States.
The first tropical storm to hit the nation’s west coast since 1997 had the largest impact in California’s desert region, where national parks in the Mojave, in Death Valley and other nearby areas flooded. Some areas east of Los Angeles received as much as six inches of rain in a day, a summer record in several cases, and tens of thousands of people lost power for much of Sunday and into Monday.
Although millions of people in the United States were covered by the initial hurricane warnings, Hilary caused more inconvenience than actual damage. Many flights at airports were canceled, schools across Southern California closed, and some major highways were severed by rushing waters. But as of Monday afternoon, no deaths had been reported in the United States.
“Los Angeles was tested, but we came through it,” said Los Angeles City Council President Paul Krekorian (D).
Krekorian said that a storm of Hilary’s earlier strength would have been a catastrophic event for many cities, and officials urged residents to stay vigilant.
“This is Los Angeles. We have emergencies regularly,” he said.
As Hilary approached the southern border, winds that topped 80 mph battered the Baja California peninsula, flooding many communities in its path. But Hilary weakened to a tropical storm, with winds of 65 mph, by the time it made landfall on Sunday over northern Baja California.
Mexican authorities said one man died Sunday when his car was swept away by high water. But the region broadly weathered the rare summer storm with little lasting damage. Among the more alarming issues that arose over the weekend was the situation in the Palm Springs region, which lost 911 emergency service.
Officials said Monday that, while the service had not been fully restored, emergency calls were being rerouted to ensure as timely a response as possible.
As it hit land, the storm veered further east than had been initially expected, sparing the most populated areas of California. Some of Nevada was hit with rain and wind, but as of Monday, the sun had returned, schools reopened and casinos filled with tourists.
There were some lingering recriminations in Southern California, though, as the storm moved north and east. (By around midday, the storm had reached as far north as Redding, Calif., losing power along the way.)
Alberto M. Carvalho, superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second largest, defended the district’s decision Sunday to cancel Monday’s classes in anticipation of complications wrought by Hilary’s aftermath. He said doing so was important for the safety of the many students who walk to school and for the consideration of the school employees who live outside Los Angeles.
“It would have been reckless for us to make a different decision,” he said at a news conference on Monday. Schools are expected to reopen Tuesday.
Most campuses appear to have weathered the storm, he said, with the caveat that roughly two dozen schools do not have phone or internet access. One campus, the Marlton School, which serves the deaf and hard-of-hearing, was damaged by a mudslide.
High floodwaters also limited access to the northeastern Los Angeles neighborhood of Sun Valley, where hundreds of the district’s school buses are stored.
School closures are a sensitive point in L.A., where divisions remain over pandemic closures that lasted for longer than almost anywhere else in the country.
About 41,000 people — out of 1.5 million customers in the city — lost power due to the storm, according to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. As of Monday morning, around 18,000 residents remained without power, mostly in the metro area.
The storm followed a wet winter in California, natural irrigation that has nourished grasses, brush and other plants that typically can fuel wildfires when the weather turns sharply warmer, and perhaps drier, this time of year. Like much of the west’s weather, the storm brings a mix of good and bad news.
The rain from Hilary, mixed with already moisture-rich soil, has exacerbated the risk of flooding, said Benjamin Cook, a climate scientist with the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “In places where vegetation has been denuded, we could see some substantial erosion or even mudslides thanks to the heavy rainfall,” he said in an email to The Washington Post.
Yet in coming days, the rainfall from Hilary could also dampen fires scattered across forest-rich Northern California and Southern Oregon. The Happy Camp Complex fire in Klamath National Forest has engulfed nearly 11,000 acres with zero containment as of a Sunday update, according to CalFire.
“In the short term, the rainfall is likely to suppress wildfire by making it difficult for vegetation to burn,” Cook said.
Water officials said California itself is now entirely drought free for the first time in years, as many cities endured record rainfall.
The Los Angeles metro picked up 2 to 4 inches, including 2.98 inches downtown, 2.48 of which fell Sunday. It was not only a daily record, but one for all of summer. Around San Diego, 1 to 3 inches fell in most spots, also enough for a summertime record.
Mountains and high deserts north and northeast of Los Angeles saw a widespread 4 to 6 inches of rain, with some spots nearer 8 inches, leading to flash flooding and numerous road washouts.
Palmdale, Calif., a normally parched city due north of Los Angeles, picked up 3.93 inches of rain, the weather station’s record for any day since record-keeping there began in 1931. The city averages 7.32 inches of rain for the year, meaning Sunday’s total equaled roughly six months’ worth of rainfall.
Winds also reached tropical storm force in the desert, including in Palm Springs, where they gusted over 40 mph for 2½ hours between 5 and 7:30 p.m., weather officials said. The threshold for tropical storm conditions is 39 m.p.h.
Nevada also appeared to have set a tropical cyclone rainfall record. In 1906, an unnamed storm dropped 4.36 inches of rain. Hilary, however, more than doubled that. There were a number of reports of rain totaling in the 8- to 9-inch range in the Spring Mountains near Las Vegas. Mt. Charleston and Kyle and Lee Canyons northwest of the metro area experienced significant flash flooding.
The storm’s damp aftermath may not be sufficient to help British Columbia, now being scorched by 379 active wildfires, with 154 reported as out of control, according to British Columbia Wildfire Service. Of the notable fires, Bush Creek East wildfire has spread over 41,000 hectares, and the Crater Creek wildfire has consumed an estimated 44,000 hectares.
The region won’t see much relief from Hilary’s heavy rainfall, according to Doug Gillham, a meteorologist and manager at the weather center for Canada’s Weather Network.
“The heaviest rain will fall well east of many of the fires, and some of the active fires will not see any significant rain,” he told The Post in an email.
An upper-level low-pressure system will tap into some of the moisture from Hilary and bring some rain to the region — just not enough. “The remnants of Hilary will not bring enough rain to extinguish the fires. Unfortunately, hot and dry weather will return by the weekend,” Gillham said.
Ajasa reported from Washington. Matthew Cappucci, Ian Livingston, Maham Javaid and Kasha Patel in Washington and Dan Michalski in Las Vegas contributed to this report.
Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/08/21/hilary-tropical-storm-damage-california/