Tropical Storm Hilary lashed Southern California on Sunday, triggering flash floods, mudslides and power outages after making landfall in Mexico's Baja California Peninsula, leaving at least one person dead.
The National Weather Service is warning of “life-threatening and locally catastrophic flash flooding” as Hilary moves up the West Coast. People as far north as Idaho were bracing for heavy rain, while more than 20 flash flooding warnings were in place across California early Monday morning.
Hilary was the first tropical storm to hit the state of California in over 25 years. The storm, which was once a Category 1 hurricane, was downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone as it moved northward.
Yahoo News is providing live coverage of the historic storm and its impacts from reporters in California and elsewhere in the blog below.
• Hilary lashed Southern California on Sunday, triggering flash floods, mudslides and power outages after making landfall in Mexico's Baja Peninsula. The storm, which was downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone early Monday, is expected to continue to weaken and eventually dissipate as it moves through Nevada.
• There were over 57,000 reported power outages in California, USA Today reported, including over 23,000 outages in Los Angeles County.
• Numerous school districts, including Los Angeles Unified School District, were scheduled to be closed on Monday in advance of the storm.
Yahoo News West Coast correspondent Andrew Romano reports from Los Angeles:
If you’re familiar with the Los Angeles River, it’s probably only from movies such as Grease, The Dark Knight Rises and Terminator 2: Judgment Day — movies where it doesn’t look like a waterway at all, but rather a bone-dry concrete basin perfect for a cinematic drag race or car chase.
But that’s not what the L.A. River looks like right now:
For months, an abundance of water — the product of this winter’s torrential downpours — has been rushing from the Simi Hills and
Susana Mountains down through the city of LA to the river’s mouth in Long Beach, where it flows into San Pedro Bay. Tropical Storm Hilary has only intensified the rapids. Historically, the river ran dry during the summer months, then flooded the surrounding areas during wet winters. But starting in the 1930s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers formalized its path (in concrete) and mitigated the problem.
Outsiders often mock the river as an eyesore. But seeing it surging to the sea today is a reminder of its once-destructive power — and of the extreme drought conditions that Hilary and other recent storms have erased. As the New York Times reports:
"After three of the driest years in California history, much of the state is currently free of drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Storms fueled by “atmospheric rivers” this winter led to flooding and destruction across the state, but they also relieved severe drought conditions across wide swaths of the state, including Los Angeles and San Diego Counties, both of which were in Hilary’s path.
"Heavy winter rain, as well as record amounts of snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains, also has filled many of the state’s reservoirs well above historical averages, according to California Water Watch, a daily tracker maintained by the California Department of Water Resources.
"And while wildfires remain a threat across the state, this year’s fire season has been significantly less destructive when compared with a five-year average of fire incidents and acres burned."
It turns out even tropical storms can have an upside.