Hurricane Milton building up to be a historic storm
AccuWeather’s Bernie Rayno and Jon Porter warn that the conditions set to be brought by powerful Hurricane Milton is setting up to be a historic storm.
Floridians are bracing for Hurricane Milton, the “catastrophic” storm expected to make landfall late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning. It comes nearly two weeks since Hurricane Helene brought devastation to parts of the Southeast and killed at least 230 people, the Associated Press reported.
Last year, the West Coast faced Hilary, which strengthened to a Category 4 hurricane far off southwestern Mexico’s coast before weakening to a tropical storm when it made landfall in Baja California, according to a National Hurricane Center report in February.
Hilary flooded parts of Mexico, Southern California, and Nevada, leaving three people dead and causing more than $900 million in damage in America. While Hilary’s impact in the U.S. was that of a tropical storm, it was a post-tropical cyclone when it reached northern Baja California — meaning it was no longer considered a tropical cyclone — the report found.
So, why is it that California, also bordering an ocean, isn’t burdened by hurricanes? Here’s what to know.
How do hurricanes form?
Hurricanes form over the ocean and typically start as a tropical wave. The weather system moves across the tropics. Warm ocean air will rise into the storm, forming an area of low pressure underneath. The air rises and cools, forming clouds and thunderstorms. This releases more heat to power the storm.
Ocean water near California is “generally too cool to support hurricane formation,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate.gov. Another factor that helps prevent Californians from facing tropical cyclones — a hurricane is a tropical cyclone with sustained surface winds of 74 mph or greater — is the direction the West Coast’s prevailing winds blow, generally steering tropical systems toward the ocean, Climate.gov reported.
When was the last hurricane in California?
The only known hurricane that made landfall in Southern California was in 1858, said Philip Gonsalves, a National Weather Service San Diego meteorologist. The hurricane, a Category 1, struck San Diego and caused “extensive wind damage to property” and “streets swept clean by heavy rains,” according to a NWS report detailing significant weather events in Southern California.
“The path of the storm exposed the entire coastline from San Diego north to the Long Beach area to estimated tropical storm–force winds,” according to a 2004 report in the American Meteorological Society.
Does California get hurricanes or typhoons?
Hurricanes and typhoons are both “intensified tropical cyclones,” so the difference in name is due to their location, according to the American Red Cross. Typhoons refer to the intensified tropical cyclones found in the Northwest Pacific Ocean, usually in East Asia. Hurricanes refer to the intensified tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic, central North Pacific, or Eastern North Pacific Ocean, said the Red Cross. So, if California faced a hurricane, it wouldn’t be called a typhoon.
Nashville Tennessean reporter Jordan Green contributed to this article.
Paris Barraza is a trending reporter covering California news at The Desert Sun. Reach her at pbarraza@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @ParisBarraza.
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Publish date : 2024-10-09 16:41:00
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