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Friday, July 18, 2025

Hilary weakens to Category 1 hurricane as storm moves within striking distance of Mexican peninsula

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698 days ago
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Residents wait in line to fill up their sandbags ahead of Hurricane Hilary, in Long Beach, Calif., Saturday, Aug. 19, 2023. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Residents wait in line to fill up their sandbags ahead of Hurricane Hilary, in Long Beach, Calif., Saturday, Aug. 19, 2023. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Hur­ri­cane Hi­lary moved clos­er to the coast of Mex­i­co ear­ly Sun­day on a con­tin­ued path to the Ba­ja Cal­i­for­nia penin­su­la as a weak­ened but dan­ger­ous Cat­e­go­ry 1 hur­ri­cane, which the Na­tion­al Weath­er Ser­vice said was like­ly to bring “cat­a­stroph­ic and life-threat­en­ing” flood­ing to the re­gion and cross in­to the south­west­ern U.S. as a trop­i­cal storm.

The Na­tion­al Weath­er Cen­ter in Mi­a­mi said in the most re­cent ad­vi­so­ry at 2 a.m. that the storm was about 30 miles (45 kilo­me­tres) south of Pun­ta Eu­ge­nia, Mex­i­co, and 385 miles (625 kilo­me­tres) from San Diego, Cal­i­for­nia. The max­i­mum sus­tained wind speed re­mained un­changed at 85 mph while spread­ing “heavy rains” north­ward over the penin­su­la.

Me­te­o­rol­o­gists warned that de­spite weak­en­ing, the storm re­mained treach­er­ous.

One per­son drowned Sat­ur­day in the Mex­i­can town of San­ta Ros­alia, on the penin­su­la’s east­ern coast, when a ve­hi­cle was swept away in an over­flow­ing stream. Res­cue work­ers man­aged to save four oth­er peo­ple, said Edith Aguilar Villav­i­cen­cio, the may­or of Mulege town­ship.

It was not im­me­di­ate­ly clear whether of­fi­cials con­sid­ered the fa­tal­i­ty re­lat­ed to the hur­ri­cane, but a video post­ed by lo­cal of­fi­cials showed tor­rents of wa­ter cours­ing through the town’s streets.

Fore­cast­ers said the storm was still ex­pect­ed to en­ter the his­to­ry books as the first trop­i­cal storm to hit South­ern Cal­i­for­nia in 84 years, bring­ing flash floods, mud­slides, iso­lat­ed tor­na­does, high winds and pow­er out­ages. The fore­cast prompt­ed au­thor­i­ties to is­sue an evac­u­a­tion ad­vi­so­ry for San­ta Catali­na Is­land, urg­ing res­i­dents and beach­go­ers to leave the tourist des­ti­na­tion 23 miles (37 kilo­me­tres) off the coast.

Eliz­a­beth Adams, a me­te­o­rol­o­gist at the Na­tion­al Weath­er Ser­vice San Diego of­fice, said rain could fall up to 3 inch­es (7.62 cen­time­tres) an hour across South­ern Cal­i­for­nia’s moun­tains and deserts, from late Sun­day morn­ing in­to the af­ter­noon. The in­tense rain­fall dur­ing those hours could cause wide­spread and life-threat­en­ing flash floods.

Cal­i­for­nia Gov. Gavin New­som pro­claimed a state of emer­gency, and of­fi­cials had urged peo­ple to fin­ish their prepa­ra­tions be­fore sun­down Sat­ur­day. It would be too late by Sun­day, one ex­pert said.

The hur­ri­cane is the lat­est ma­jor cli­mate dis­as­ter to wreak hav­oc across the U.S., Cana­da and Mex­i­co. Hawaii’s is­land of Maui is still reel­ing from last week’s blaze that killed over 100 peo­ple and rav­aged the his­toric town of La­haina, mak­ing it the dead­liest U.S. wild­fire in more than a cen­tu­ry. In Cana­da, fire­fight­ers on Sat­ur­day con­tin­ued to bat­tle blazes dur­ing the na­tion’s worst fire sea­son on record.

Hi­lary brought heavy rain and flood­ing to Mex­i­co and the south­west­ern U.S. on Sat­ur­day, ahead of the storm’s ex­pect­ed Sun­day bor­der cross­ing. Fore­cast­ers warned it could dump up to 10 inch­es (25 cen­time­tres) — a year’s worth of rain for some ar­eas — in south­ern Cal­i­for­nia and south­ern Neva­da.

“This does not lessen the threat, es­pe­cial­ly the flood threat,” Jamie Rhome, the U.S. Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter’s deputy di­rec­tor, said dur­ing a Sat­ur­day brief­ing to an­nounce the storm’s down­grad­ed sta­tus. “Don’t let the weak­en­ing trend and the in­ten­si­ty low­er your guard.”

Me­te­o­rol­o­gists al­so ex­pect­ed the storm to churn up “life-threat­en­ing” surf and rip cur­rents, in­clud­ing waves up to 40 feet (12 me­ters) high, along Mex­i­co’s Pa­cif­ic coast. Dozens sought refuge at storm shel­ters in the twin re­sorts of Los Ca­bos at the south­ern tip of the Ba­ja penin­su­la, and fire­fight­ers res­cued a fam­i­ly in San Jose del Cabo af­ter the re­sort was hit by dri­ving rain and wind.

In Ti­jua­na, fire de­part­ment head Rafael Car­ril­lo voiced the fear at the back of every­one’s mind in the bor­der city of 1.9 mil­lion peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly res­i­dents who live in homes on steep hill­sides.

”If you hear nois­es, or the ground crack­ing, it is im­por­tant for you to check it and get out as fast as pos­si­ble, be­cause the ground can weak­en and your home could col­lapse,” Car­ril­lo said.

Ti­jua­na or­dered all beach­es closed Sat­ur­day, and set up a half dozen storm shel­ters at sports com­plex­es and gov­ern­ment of­fices.

Mex­i­co’s navy evac­u­at­ed 850 peo­ple from is­lands off the Ba­ja coast, and de­ployed al­most 3,000 troops for emer­gency op­er­a­tions. In La Paz, the pic­turesque cap­i­tal of Ba­ja Cal­i­for­nia Sur state on the Sea of Cortez, po­lice pa­trolled closed beach­es to keep swim­mers out of the whipped-up surf.

The U.S. hur­ri­cane cen­ter post­ed trop­i­cal storm and po­ten­tial flood warn­ings for South­ern Cal­i­for­nia from the Pa­cif­ic coast to in­te­ri­or moun­tains and deserts. The San Bernardi­no Coun­ty sher­iff is­sued evac­u­a­tion warn­ings for sev­er­al moun­tain and foothill com­mu­ni­ties ahead of the storm, while Or­ange Coun­ty sent out its own alert for any­one liv­ing in a wild­fire burn scar in the San­ta Ana Moun­tains’ Sil­ver­a­do and Williams canyons.

Au­thor­i­ties in Los An­ge­les scram­bled to get the home­less off the streets and in­to shel­ters, and of­fi­cials or­dered all state beach­es in San Diego and Or­ange coun­ties closed.

Across the re­gion, mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties ran out of free sand­bags and gro­cery shelves emp­tied out as res­i­dents stock­piled sup­plies. The U.S. Na­tion­al Park Ser­vice closed Cal­i­for­nia’s Joshua Tree Na­tion­al Park and Mo­jave Na­tion­al Pre­serve to keep vis­i­tors from be­com­ing strand­ed amid flood­ing.

Ma­jor League Base­ball resched­uled three Sun­day games in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, mov­ing them to Sat­ur­day as part of split dou­ble­head­ers, and SpaceX de­layed the launch of a satel­lite-car­ry­ing rock­et from a base on Cal­i­for­nia’s cen­tral coast un­til at least Mon­day.

The White House said Pres­i­dent Joe Biden had been briefed on the lat­est pre­pared­ness plans ahead of the hur­ri­cane’s turn to the U.S. “I urge every­one, every­one in the path of this storm, to take pre­cau­tions and lis­ten to the guid­ance of state and lo­cal of­fi­cials,” he said.

Hi­lary on Fri­day had rapid­ly grown in­to an ex­ceed­ing­ly dan­ger­ous Cat­e­go­ry 4 ma­jor hur­ri­cane, with its top sus­tained winds peak­ing at 145 mph (230 kph). Its winds dropped to 115 mph (185 kph) ear­ly Sat­ur­day as a Cat­e­go­ry 3 storm, be­fore fur­ther weak­en­ing to 100 mph (161 kph) as a Cat­e­go­ry 2.

By late af­ter­noon Sat­ur­day, it was cen­tered 600 miles (965 kilo­me­tres) south-south­east of San Diego, Cal­i­for­nia. Mov­ing north-north­west at 17 mph (28 kph), the storm was ex­pect­ed to turn more to­ward the north and pick up for­ward speed.

The hur­ri­cane was ex­pect­ed to brush past Pun­ta Eu­ge­nia on the Pa­cif­ic coast be­fore mak­ing a night­time land­fall along a sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed area of the penin­su­la about 200 miles (330 kilo­me­tres) south of the Pa­cif­ic port city of En­se­na­da.

Dazio re­port­ed re­port­ed from Los An­ge­les. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Seth Boren­stein in Wash­ing­ton, Maria Verza and Mark Steven­son in Mex­i­co City, John Antczak in Los An­ge­les, Julie Wat­son in San Diego, and Eu­gene Gar­cia in New­port Beach, Cal­i­for­nia, con­tributed to this re­port.

CABO SAN LU­CAS, Mex­i­co (AP) —

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