First SoCal Tropical Storm Since '39 Drops Years Worth Of Rain
The remains of Hurricane Hilary, now a post-tropical storm, is inundating Southern California and northwestern Mexico, with “continued life-threatening and locally catastrophic flooding” according to the National Hurricane Center. The first tropical storm to hit Southern California since 1939, Hilary hit some areas with over a year of rainfall at once, setting off dangerous flash flooding, and threatening mudslide-prone regions of both Mexico and Southern California. “The risk in the southeastern deserts is genuinely alarming,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain told the New York Times. “We’re talking, in some cases, it will be multiple years’ worth of rainfall.” And because when it rains, it (proverbially) pours, a 5.1 magnitude earthquake centered on Ojai, California, rattled the water-logged region on Sunday.
(Storm: AP, AP, CNN, Axios, Yale Climate Connections; Mudslides: KTLA; Swain: New York Times $; Year of extremes: New York Times $; Climate Signals background: Hurricanes)
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