Hilary Arrives

Hurricane Hilary made landfall in Southern California over the weekend, bringing wind gusts of up to 80 miles per hour and dumping a half foot of rain in some spots across the region. The storm had intensified into a Category 3 system by the end of last week, losing steam as it approached the US before eventually arriving as a tropical storm (see trajectory). Landfall of tropical storms and hurricanes along the Southern California coast is exceedingly rare. The city of San Diego only saw one tropical storm during the 20th century—a system in 1939 that caught most of the population off guard and led to almost 100 deaths. Climate scientists attribute the storm in part to the current El Niño weather pattern, which warms waters in the eastern Pacific and fuels storm activity. California's desert resort town of Palm Springs, which typically sees a half-inch of precipitation per summer, logged multiple inches of rain over the course of a few hours. See photos from the storm's landfall here. Separately, as the rain was falling, Ventura County was hit with a 5.1-magnitude earthquake. No injuries were reported as of this writing.