Hurricane Hilary neared landfall on Mexico’s Baja California peninsula as a still-dangerous Category 1 hurricane carrying so much rain that forecasters said “catastrophic and life-threatening” flooding is likely across a broad region of the southwestern U.S.
The National Weather Center in Miami said that as of 5 a.m. the storm was “very near” the Baja coast south of Ensenada, and 285 miles from San Diego, California. The maximum sustained wind speed dropped to 80 mph while spreading “heavy rains” northward over the peninsula.One person drowned Saturday in the Mexican town of Santa Rosalia, on the peninsula’s eastern coast, when a vehicle was swept away in an overflowing stream.
Elizabeth Adams, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service San Diego office, said rain could fall up to 3 inches an hour across Southern California’s mountains and deserts, from late Sunday morning into the afternoon. The intense rainfall during those hours could cause widespread and life-threatening flash floods.
Hilary already brought heavy rain and flooding to Mexico and the southwestern U.S. on Saturday, ahead of the storm’s expected Sunday border crossing. Forecasters warned it could dump up to 10 inches — a year’s worth of rain for some areas — in southern California and southern Nevada. In Tijuana, fire department head Rafael Carrillo voiced the fear at the back of everyone’s mind in the border city of 1.9 million people, particularly residents who live in homes on steep hillsides.
Mexico’s navy evacuated 850 people from islands off the Baja coast, and deployed almost 3,000 troops for emergency operations. In La Paz, the picturesque capital of Baja California Sur state on the Sea of Cortez, police patrolled closed beaches to keep swimmers out of the whipped-up surf. Across the region, municipalities ran out of free sandbags and grocery shelves emptied out as residents stockpiled supplies. The U.S. National Park Service closed California’s Joshua Tree National Park and Mojave National Preserve to keep visitors from becoming stranded amid flooding.
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