Global climate experts are predicting a moderate to strong La Niña weather event this year, meaning a stormy season for most parts of the world but possibly drier-than-normal conditions in Southern California. A La Niña usually means a more active Atlantic hurricane season with potentially stronger storms.
Hurricane Genevieve fizzled after hammering Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, but its remnant moisture and spin may boost thunderstorms in the Desert Southwest and fire-ravaged California through Monday.
Genevieve rapidly intensified to a Category 4 hurricane Tuesday, then grazed Mexico’s southern Baja California Peninsula as a weaker hurricane with flooding rain, high winds and high surf.
After that, as most hurricanes in this part of the eastern Pacific do when they move farther northwest over cooler water and more stable air, Genevieve fizzled rapidly into a remnant low west of the Baja Peninsula.
September 1939 was a stormy month on the world stage. On Sept. 1, Hitler invaded Poland. On Sept.3, Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand responded by declaring war on Germany. In Los Angeles that month, as residents sweated through an unusual heat wave and nervously watched the storm clouds of World War II gathering overseas, four tropical cyclones that would affect Southern California were born in the eastern North Pacific. No tropical cyclones had made it north of 25 degrees latitude in the northeastern Pacific basin during all of 1937 and 1938.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
