Category 1 Hurricane to Hit CA Next Week?

We’re not sure where Mark Michelson got the accompanying weather map, which he says "depicts a Category 4/5 hurricane that had turned the corner down around Cabo. Looks like a Category 1 or 2 as it goes by Ensenada, and then a Cat 1 or tropical storm when it arrives in Southern California, if it arrives at all. Again, the storm hasn’t even formed yet, but it made my morning to see some actual fireworks forecast to come my way."

For what it’s worth, Passage Weather is forecasting a broad hurricane having formed well off the coast of Mexico by Friday July 17, but never coming very close to Cabo, let alone Ensenada or Southern California.

The National Hurricane Center reports that "concentrated showers and thunderstorms associated with a low pressure area centered about 1,300 miles southwest of the southern tip of Baja California Sur have become better organized during the last 24 hours. Further development is expected and a tropical depression will likely form over the weekend while the low moves generally northwestward." They say there is a 70% chance of formation in 48 hours and a 90% chance of formation in the next five days.

Making short range forecasts of tropical storm and hurricane paths and forces is difficult. Making such forecasts before the storms have even formed is . . . well, impossible.

The 1939 California Tropical Storm, aka the 1939 Long Beach tropical storm, aka El Cordonazo, and aka The Lash of St. Francis, is the only tropical storm to have made landfall in California in the 20th Century. (A hurricane hit San Diego in 1858.)

The 1939 California Tropical Storm was a deadly one, claiming 48 lives at sea alone. Six people caught on beaches were drowned. Twenty-four died aboard a vessel named Spray as it attempted to dock at Point Mugu. The two survivors, a man and a woman, swam ashore and then walked five miles to Oxnard. Fifteen people from Ventura drowned aboard the fishing boat Lur. And many vessels were blown ashore.

Flooding killed another 45 people in Southern California, as downtown L.A. got more than five inches of rain in 24 hours and Mt. Wilson got more than 11 inches. Beachfront houses all along the coast were washed away.

So while it’s unlikely California is going to get hit by a tropical storm or hurricane this month, it’s still possible.

Beau Vrolyk, who has restored the schooner Mayan, which formerly belonged to rocker David Crosby, says his dad told him about the last time a tropical storm hit the Los Angeles area. "He was at the Los Angeles YC for the big blow in 1939. He says it knocked the yacht club off its foundation and sank half the fleet in the fish harbor. There were 10-ft breakers inside Los Angeles Harbor. There are still a few folks around the Los Angeles YC who remember it."