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Tropical Storm Hilary Rolls into San Diego with Rain, Winds, and Media Hysteria

Tropical Storm Hilary Rolls into San Diego with Rain, Winds, and Media Hysteria

The Los Angeles Times went right to the “climate change” narrative as part of its storm coverage.

Yesterday, as I did my weekly grocery run at a store near my San Diego home, I noted that the lines were long, and the cases of water were rolling out the door steadily. While not quite the same level as the covid-induced panic buying of March 2020, Southern Californians were certainly preparing for the arrival of Tropical Storm Hilary, which had been a hurricane until it hit the Baja peninsula on Sunday morning.

Presently, my area is experiencing light winds and steady rain, which is a far cry from the massive hurricane the media was preparing us for Friday.

Forecasters say light rains are anticipated Saturday night and will progress into the morning.

The eye of the storm is projected to hit between 3 p.m. Sunday and 6 p.m. As the storm moves through, heavy rains will come in followed by strong winds of 50 mph sustained in San Diego and up to 70 mph in the mountains. Excessive flooding is expected. San Diego County was expected to begin feeling the headwinds of Hurricane Hilary late Saturday, ahead of widespread rain and wind Sunday and Monday, according to city officials.

Hilary was at Category 2 strength Saturday afternoon off the coast of Baja California and was expected to further weaken to a tropical storm by the time it reaches Southern California, but forecasters say the storm will still pack quite a punch.

“Heavy rainfall leading to areas of flash flooding is expected through the afternoon in our mountain and desert areas,” the National Weather Service’s San Diego office said Saturday. “Chances of widespread, heavy rain will continue into Sunday, when heavier and more widespread rain is expected.”

While the City of San Diego is not likely to be terribly impacted by the storm, the nearby mountain and desert areas are being hit with floods.

The Coachella Valley — which remains under an unprecedented tropical storm warning — is experiencing heavy rain and flooding as Tropical Storm Hilary churns through the region on Sunday afternoon.

At 5 p.m., the National Hurricane Center reported the center of Tropical Storm Hilary was located 25 miles south-southwest of Palm Springs and moving north at 23 mph.

As Hilary moved closer to the Coachella Valley, strong winds have picked up. Palm Desert reported a peak wind gust of 46 mph at 4:20 p.m.

Palm Springs International Airport had a top wind gust of 40 mph at 3:40 p.m.

Of course, The Los Angeles Times was quick to connect with climate change cultists for comments about the storm. The article made it seem that tropical storms slamming the area were practically unknown and that the waters around Southern California were essentially hurricane-free.

But globally, July set a record for the highest monthly ocean surface temperature in NOAA’s 174-year history. And specifically, ocean temperatures off the coast of Baja California are higher than normal, due to the warming effects of El Niño and the proliferation of fossil fuel emissions.

“Over the last 40 years, climate change has made hurricanes more powerful, both in terms of wind speed and the amount of water they deliver as rain,” said Kristy Dahl, principal climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Massachusetts. “To see a storm of this magnitude in this part of the world — and at this time of year — is highly unusual.”

However, a check of actual historical records indicates that the region has been hit with tropical storms in the past.

And the region has had several close-calls with hurricanes before automobiles were in use.

  • After October 1854: A system considered to be a tropical cyclone made landfall over Northern California, just north of the Golden Gate.
  • October 2, 1858: The 1858 San Diego hurricane passed very close to Southern California. It brought several hours of hurricane and gale-force winds to an area stretching from San Diego to Los Angeles. This storm was reconstructed as just missing making landfall, dissipating offshore.
  • Sometime before October 14, 1858: Since this tropical cyclone is reported in a newspaper as being only “one of the most terrific and violent hurricanes ever noted”, the report may imply the existence of an earlier hurricane in southern California. Other than occurring before the newspaper account was published (October 18, 1858), everything else about this “hurricane”, including whether it even existed, is unknown.
  • Before June or after October 1859: A system considered to be a tropical cyclone made landfall between Cape Mendocino and San Francisco Bay.

The media, once again, pushes hysteria-focused pseudoscience narratives. Meanwhile, the people of Southern California are clearly taking care of business, and hopefully the damage will be minimal.

Finally, a big thank you to everyone who texted and emailed me. My family and I are just fine…just a little wet.

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Comments

Amtrak cancelled its trains to and from Los Angeles, in case you had a reservation.

I loved the part where Death Valley, that gets 0.01″ of rain per year has already gotten almost 2″ .. two centuries of rain

If you’re interested in rare flowers, there ought to be a real crop out there when the sun comes back out

In today’s America, the media may be the most destructive institution we have. It permeates everything non stop.

    scooterjay in reply to Whitewall. | August 21, 2023 at 11:44 am

    …and it continues unabated while we grumble. Bud Light? Target?
    Both learned an economic lesson. I’m sure viewership may remain, but I’d like to know the retention of info spread by media as an additional gauge as to how severely fooked we are.
    They. Don’t. Care.
    And it is obvious.

Oh, noes! 46 MPH sustained winds! It’s the end of the planet!

Where we live in NW Wyoming is a particularly windy place, here in the windiest state of the lower 48. During a normal week we can see sustained winds of 50 MPH, with much higher gusts, which is considered completely normal. Our neighbor across the way has a weather station on which the anemometer records only up to 100 MPH…it’s been pegged at the top several times in the past years.

Just after we moved to this house I was sitting on the back deck (which is protected from the prevailing winds by a small wall) and watched somebody’s patio umbrella go past a couple of hundred feet up, gaining altitude and accelerating as it went. They had failed to furl it and tie it down, and it probably ended up somewhere in South Dakota (no, not really). All of our deck and patio furniture is routinely secured with tie-downs and/or bungee cords just in case the wind comes up.

Watching the media do this crap would be amusing if it weren’t so pitiful. We had weeks of thick heavy Canuckistan forest fire smoke this spring, but it was never reported in the lame-stream. Let NY-effin’-C get a couple of days and it’s the end of the universe in the “news”. Tornadoes in fly-over land are reported by the crickets, but we hear about every single thunderstorm over the Left Coast and E(litist wannabe) Coast.

    The Gentle Grizzly in reply to Blackwing1. | August 21, 2023 at 10:42 am

    “Just after we moved to this house I was sitting on the back deck (which is protected from the prevailing winds by a small wall) and watched somebody’s patio umbrella go past a couple of hundred feet up, gaining altitude and accelerating as it went.”

    Was there a woman, wearing a long, flowing dress, holding a soft-side bag in one hand, and the umbrella in another?

    /jk

      ISWYDT! I loved that movie as a kid.. Yes,, I am that old.. ohhhh good times.

      No, but there was an older-looking lady with long skirts and a hat, riding a bicycle with a picnic hamper on the back going past…

      Shary Bobbins! The rain filled the pool…. one of the small flowering trees had branches break… this was not even an “event”… fortunately. Yes, I did keep my old house in SoCal… purchased before the bloom of the PDRK. It’s a little better than Mexico… for now. I still can breathe freely up North… for now. At least spending time in the USSR, ZA and Zimbabwe… I have a yardstick of when to get out of Dodge… for now.

After listening to the news on the radio (TV news is over for me), I think I will turn mentions of “climate change” into a drinking game.

Maybe it is the natural association of the name Hilary (or Hillary) with complete disasters…

Mid City Los Angeles: almost no wind, rain similar to a big winter storm.

I caught some Alerts about the storm hitting LA.. they were all about the LA river flooding (isn’t that a cement drainage ditch, of sorts?) and between .5″ and 1″ of rain.
Even the guy that flies the hurricane hunter said that the storm was pretty smooth and falling apart.

Ty Lesie for reporting in… It looked like your town was going to be a bullseye.

When I saw the name, I thought it was going to be a really nasty storm. Suicides all over the place. Hillary’s grand exit.

“Media Hysteria.”
Yeah, my family in Florida is way overly worried about me getting hammered. Geez, I’m in PHOENIX, people! There’s a bunch of mountains between us and them. We got 0.19″ rain this whole past month. Woo hoo, Hilary finally blessed us with enough overcast to wash our vehicles without paint damage.

Babylon Bee is reporting that hurricane Hilary has made landfall in CA and over 30,000 emails have been destroyed so far.

E Howard Hunt | August 21, 2023 at 2:32 pm

Baby, The Rain must Fall.

So basically, San Diego got a heavier than usual rain and the usual places flooded. The ocean will have some runoff for a short while. Los Angeles got it worse with Dodger Stadium flooded (no tears there, sorry). The big targets were in the middle of the state because the storm took a sudden turn east when it hit California.

Wake me up when La Jolla is under water.

    artichoke in reply to Tel. | August 22, 2023 at 8:55 am

    The Central Valley can use all the rain it can get, to make up for being deprived of irrigation for years in support of the all-important delta smelt.

The Sierra from south to north got a very good wash down.

Fire season kaput.

http://www.hurricanescience.org/history/storms/1930s/LaborDay/

“ On September 2, 1935, Labor Day, the hurricane reached a peak intensity of 892 mb. The hurricane made landfall later that night as a Category 5 storm, crossing the Florida Keys between Key West and Miami, FL. As it made landfall, the hurricane delivered maximum sustained winds of approximately 298 km/h (185 mph). ”

Florida laughs at pretenders.

Those sea temps should be taken with a grain of salt. They used to measure them with buoys, but now they measure them with infrared which is usually several degree warmer than the buoys. The infrared measures the surface temperature of the water, but the buoys measured the temperature a little above the water.

It seems like the coverage outran the actual damage yet again. Some meteorologist (with the official title and presumably degree) was talking about all the economic damage caused by cancelled and delayed events. Why did they have a meteorologist talking about economics anyway?

Almost as if they were expecting a real Cat 4 with real devastation and didn’t get it, but the news coverage was already revved up and ready to go and had to say something to support some particular climate narrative.