Tropical Storm Hilary has cut a narrow channel of severe damage through central California, bombarding the south-west coast of the United States with heavy rain and sending dangerous floodwaters into the state’s mountains and deserts.
Though officials have not yet released detailed information on the extent of the damage, there have been power outages across southern California, and extraordinary scenes in the city of Palm Springs, as locals battle waves of raging floodwater.
A truck moves through standing water as Tropical Storm Hilary approaches Palm Springs.Credit: Reuters
The outer edge of the storm is affecting areas in a diameter of some 650 kilometres, which is why, for example, the city of Los Angeles is being lashed with heavy rain and wind even though it is not directly in the storm’s path.
In an extraordinary twist to an equally extraordinary day in the usually warm and dry California summer, mother nature even delivered a sideshow in the form of a 5.5 magnitude earthquake, which shook the city in the mid-afternoon. The US Geological Survey reported the quake’s epicentre as the central California city of Ojai.
Worst hit have been smaller communities along the eastern side of the Santa Margarita and Santa Ana Mountains, and the Coachella Valley, on the eastern side of Mount San Jacinto, as the storm front moves north through California and towards the San Gabriel Mountains, and beyond that into Nevada.
As the name suggests, Palm Springs, located in the Coachella Valley, spends much of its year receiving no rainfall whatsoever, making the downpour of more than 5 centimetres of rain a record. The storm is expected to continue dumping rain on the area through the night.
The emergency room of the Eisenhower Medical Centre in nearby Rancho Mirage was flooded after a nearby waterway breached its banks and send floodwaters into lowlands, including the approach to the hospital. Many of the city’s major roadways have been breached by floodwaters.
In Los Angeles, there were reports of minor damage: a rescue from a car trapped by floodwater, downed power lines, a large tree toppled in the UCLA university community of Westwood and two debris flows – essentially dry debris swept up by fast-moving floodwaters – in the Sherman Oaks neighbourhood.
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