CABO SAN LUCAS, Mexico (AP) .- Hurricane “Hilary” headed toward Baja California early Saturday while the US National Hurricane Center (NHC, for its acronym in English) predicts “potentially lethal and catastrophic flooding” for the Mexican peninsula and the southwestern United States, where the meteor is expected to make landfall on Sunday as a tropical storm.
Further north, in Los Angeles, authorities were trying to get the homeless off the streets, setting up shelters and preparing evacuations.
“Hilary” is expected to hit the Mexican mainland Saturday night before turning north to go down in history as the first tropical storm to hit Southern California in 84 years.
The NHC issued a tropical storm watch for a wide swath of southern California, from the Pacific coast to inland mountains and deserts. Authorities were considering evacuation plans for the Californian island of Catalina.
“I don’t think any of us ever thought that I would be standing here talking about a hurricane or a tropical storm,” said Janice Hahn, chairwoman of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.
After rapidly gaining strength early Friday and losing some steam later, “Hilary” remained a Category 3 hurricane early Saturday with maximum sustained winds of 125 mph, up from 145 mph. .
On Saturday morning the vortex of the meteor was about 375 kilometers southwest of the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula. It was moving in a north-northwest direction at 26 km/h and is forecast to turn further north, in addition to gaining speed.
The latest forecast called for Hilary to make landfall along a sparsely populated area of Baja California, about 330 kilometers south of the Pacific port of Ensenada.
As it continues to move north it could dump heavy downpours on Tijuana. Many of the homes in this border city of 1.9 million people are built on steep slopes.
Mayor Montserrat Caballero Ramírez said the city was closely monitoring the storm and cleaning storm drains. The sprawling metropolis is particularly susceptible to landslides and flooding, partly due to its rugged terrain. There are huts on ravines that have little vegetation to retain the earth. In addition, dozens of people live under tarpaulins on the streets and in flood-prone areas, including migrants who arrive daily from various parts of the world.
The city has set up four shelters in high-risk areas and is warning its residents about the dangers, according to Caballero Ramírez.
The Mexican government issued preventive advisories for parts of mainland Mexico and placed some 18,000 soldiers on alert.
Some schools in Cabo San Lucas were being set up as temporary shelters, said Flora Aguilar, a city official.
In La Paz, the picturesque capital of the state of Baja California Sur, on the Sea of Cortez, police patrolled closed beaches to keep bathers away from the surf. Schools were closed in five municipalities.
“Hilary” is very likely to hit California early Monday at tropical storm strength, although showers are expected to start as early as Saturday, according to the San Diego office of the National Weather Service.
Officials said the storm could bring heavy rain to the southwestern United States, dumping 3 to 6 inches in some places and up to 10 inches in isolated areas of both southern California and southern Nevada.
“Two to three inches of rain in Southern California is unheard of” for this time of year, said Kristen Corbosiero, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Albany who specializes in Pacific hurricanes. “That’s an amount of rain for an entire summer and fall that will probably fall in 6 to 12 hours.”
The region could experience rainfall of an intensity seen only once a century, and there’s a good chance Nevada will break its rainfall record, said meteorologist Jeff Masters of the Yale Climate Connections climate change information service and a former government meteorologist. who flew into hurricanes to make measurements.
President Joe Biden said the Federal Emergency Management Agency had deployed personnel and supplies to the region.
“I urge everyone in the path of this storm to take precautions and pay attention to guidance from state and local officials,” Biden told reporters Friday at Camp David, where he met with the rulers of Japan and South Korea.
Los Angeles police officers were driving on back roads near homes and stores to deliver warnings via public address systems, and to urge homeless people living in riverbeds to move to shelters before the storm hits the region.
Southern California officials were also reinforcing sandbanks, built to protect low-lying coastal communities from winter swells, like Huntington Beach, which calls itself “America’s Surf City.”
SpaceX has delayed launching a rocket carrying a satellite from a base on California’s central coast until at least Monday. The company said weather conditions in the Pacific could make it difficult for a ship to retrieve rocket propellant.
Tropical storms don’t usually hit southern California because prevailing winds tend to push them west into the open ocean or into northeastern Mexico and other parts of the southwestern United States, experts say.
“Almost all of them just go to the sea. That’s why we never hear about them,” said Kerry Emanuel, a professor of hurricanes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
That’s unlikely to happen with “Hilary,” primarily due to a high-pressure heat dome expected to bring temperatures of at least 37 degrees Celsius to the north-central United States and prevent the storm from turning east, Masters pointed out.
