Hurricane Odile To Blast Baja California; Cause New Flooding In Desert Southwest?

Satellite view of Hurricane Odile approaching
the southern tip of Baja California on Sunday.  

This hurricane season, the East Coast of the United States hasn't had it too bad, as there haven't been many tropical systems in the Atlantic so far this year.

That's the good news.

The bad news, is, we have to keep turning our eyes to the west, which we don't often have to do for hurricanes.

Right now, Hurricane Odile is the troublemaker. It's moving toward the Baja California pennisula on the northwest coast of Mexico.

As of late morning Sunday, Eastern Daylight Time, and breakfast time out in western Mexico, the storm had top sustained winds of 135 mph.

That's a Catagory 4 hurricane, the second strongest catagory we have. Later today, those strong wind will hit the southern tip of Baja California, and then spread northward as the hurricane moves toward the northwest, along the coast.

Basically, this means much of Baja California in Mexico is screwed. They're going to get extremely damaging winds, of course. Also, a severe storm surge will slam into coastal buildings and structures, causing severe damage.

It'll rain like hell with this, of course. They're expecting five to 10 inches of rain, with some mountainous areas probably clocking in at 15 inches, so there will be huge flooding and mudslides in the area.

So we should hope for the best and pray the storm unexpectedly veers away from the coast of Mexico. But don't count on it.

If Hurricane Odile is heading north, it'll hit California in the United States or someething like that, right?

No.

The West Coast is largely protected from hurricanes because the water temperature in the Pacific Ocean is chilly there, due to normal currents. Hurricanes grow and thrive on warm water, above 80 degrees, and fall apart and die in colder water.

It's extremely rare for a tropical storm to hit southern California or southeastern Arizona. It might have happened once or twice in the past century

So that's Odile's fate as it heads northwestward. It'll fall apart. But that doesn't mean the United States gets off scott free from this.

The first problem is, the southern California coast will get hammered by swells and waves generated by Odile, so there will be dangerous conditions and rip tides for swimmers and surfers. There might be some coastal flooding as well.

Even worse, moisture from Odile will move into the Desert Southwest. If this sounds familiar, it's because it is. Last week, moisture from Hurricane Norbert, which had been off the Mexican Coast, fed into Arizona, southern California and southern Nevada, and epic flooding resulted.

Phoenix, Arizona had its wettest day on record, and some of the worst flooding on record hit areas around Phoenix, Arizona, Las Vegas, Nevada and Riverside, California.

The rainfall and the flooding from Odile probably won't be as extreme as last week, but still, it spells trouble.

Most of the rain will miss coastal and central California, which is currently experiencing a big heat wave and an ever-worsening drought. Wildfires are a problem, and Odile's moisture won't be enough to tamp those blazes down.