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Comment by barathr | Hacker News Reader

This storm is going to be catastrophic for desert areas but probably just merely bad for the more coastal populated areas. Anyone in inland SoCal should be getting ready for rain unprecedented as far back as records go (150-200 years).

btw, Weather West is always the best place to go for California weather -- there's nobody better on this than climate scientist Daniel Swain: https://weatherwest.com/

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Yeah, not much so far. The storm is rotating counter-clockwise, meaning the tropical air is going to hit the mountains to the east of the coast first. Also the storm seems to be stuck around the middle of Baja California right now. Strangely enough this is where the water temp begins to cool as you move northward(https://coastalwatertemperatureguide-noaa.hub.arcgis.com/). I was worried the storm would gain some energy from the Gulf of California since that's quite warm(85F now) but that doesn't seem to be happening.

The mountains are what normally prevent the coast from seeing any of the monsoonal storms typical of CA/AZ deserts in mid-summer. It's common for moisture coming from Mexico to produce large thunderstorms east of the coastal mountain ranges this time of year.

I'm not saying this storm won't amount to anything for the coast. We'll probably get some rain and some wind. I'm not stockpiling anything and my only prep has been to put a bit of gas in the car and charge all of my batteries. We're most likely going to roll our eyes at the people panic-buying TP and water this Monday.

Edit: It's 12:32 AM in San Diego. According to several online radar maps including weather.com, we've been in the middle of a rainstorm for almost an hour. The ground is still dry and it's a calm 73F outside. Very weird. I can understand radar picking up light rain which evaporates before hitting the ground, but the map is indicating rain that is much heavier than that. Weird.

1:44AM: still solidly inside the main band of rain on the radar. The only noticable precipitation happened about 45 minutes ago and it was barely sprinkling for 2-3 minutes. Pavement is still dry. Calm with hardly any wind.

Good luck. Still calm here in northeast LA too.

A little wind and light rain at the moment in northern San Diego county

Odd, we've had steady rain in south Orange county since around 5am. It was downpouring for about 30 minutes between 6 and 7am. It's slowed a bit now but it's still been raining nonstop.

Yeah unexpected for me, seems like there is a big hook spiraling in from the east, I guess it's hitting first farther north of us.

Yeah - the other day they said 65% chance of thunderstorms the other day in the sacramento area... and it was blue skies the whole time.

But hot.

We need to go back to the nerd meteorologists nerds with elbow patches on tweed jackets as opposed to cocktail dresses on tight fitting big boobs.

I don’t know if they’ve changed how they forecast, or things are more unpredictable, or not updated as often as they seem, but “chance of rain today” forecasts have been wildly inaccurate for me - often going from 0% all day to “rain starts in 20 minutes”.

Update: It rained. Nothing special. Based on the radar map there's some more rain coming but nothing severe. So much for being the storm of the century.

I am very concerned for the people living in areas who have suffered from recent wildfires. While 2022 did not see as many, 2021 was a brutal year for fires and I worry that there has not been adequate vegetation growth to stabilize the ground structure. Sadly California has experienced mud slides and debris torrents following fires and they take just as many if not more lives.

PS: I understand there is a system for naming hurricanes but at least for me, the fact this one is named Hillary has added to my trepidation.

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