Hurricane Hilary - SoCal
 

Hi everyone,

This weekend we're experiencing the first tropical storm warning ever put in place between Hawaii and Texas.

This is challenging and unusual weather in our area so I thought I would share some notes that the president of the Orchid Society of Southern California shared with members:

1. Bring whatever you can and as much as you can indoors. If you have carpet an innexpensive painters drip cloth will help protect the carpet from runnoff water.

2. Secure any loose objects on patios, umbrellas and things like this that could be blown around in high winds.

3. Any plants that are held or mounted to a tree consider securing them with either fencing wire or florists wire.

4. Tie down heavy plants with wire to benches.

5. Cut back any dead or weak branches that could fall on your plants.

6. secure shade clothes or remove them if plants are moved indoors.

7. Quickly inspect any grow areas after the storm moves so any plants that are moved around don't end up being exposed to full sun.

8. check any panels or loose screens on your greenhouse. Tie down any doors or hatches.

Additionally, here's an article by Sue Bottom that might be of help: https://staugorchidsociety.org/PDF/H...ySueBottom.pdf

Those of you in LA County can sign up for alerts here: Ready LA County | Emergency Notifications

Stay safe out there and keep us posted on how you're preparing for the storm!

Heavy rain in August is unusual for southern California, but we just got past one of the wettest, stormiest winters on record. Rain is rain, wind is wind, at any time of year. At my house, anything loose has already been dealt with last winter. I am just covering up my Mediterranean-climate terrestrials, that need to be kept dry (or at least relatively dry) in their summer dormancy. Garbage bags (trash can size) will be covering them. "Warm wet" that the rest of the plants will get from this storm is better than the "cold wet" that they got all winter. Oh, I will also turn off the sprinklers for a few days,

Having lived in NYC during Sandy and with my mother in law living in Fort Myers, I gotta say that "wind" isn't just wind. And water when its torrential flooding isn't just water. It's not about the chemistry, is about the physics of force... Hurricane Ian was a tropical storm just hours before being upgraded to a Category 5. Hurricane Sandy never surpassed category 3. Hurricane Hilary coming our way is currently category 4.

This can be dangerous for unprepared citizens and infrastructures in communities not familiar with the devastating effects of hurricanes.

I’ll chime in as the middle ground voice. I grew up in early childhood in hurricane county, and also spent college in hurricane territory, but most of my life has been in San Diego, and I agree that they’re much much more dangerous than most people give them credit for.

But, the ocean here is considerably colder than the Atlantic, and doesn’t continue to feed and build storms as they travel north. I haven’t been tracking ocean temperatures, so it’s possible they’re unseasonably warm or the hurricane is pushing warm water in front of it, but there’s *significantly* less risk of the storm getting stronger in the last moments before landfall. We just don’t have the deep warm water required.

My only fear is if it fails to decrease in strength as it is predicted to do.

Just looked up the ocean temperature off Huntington Beach... 66 deg F. San Diego, 68 deg. F. So the cool ocean temps are very much an important factor for mitigating many of the impacts of the storm. Water temp is normal, or cooler than normal for this time of year. Low-lying areas and near the beach (as well as any burn areas) are certainly going to be vulnerable to flooding.

Don't succumb to media induced fear. Television and radio stations will do anything to keep you watching and listening so you can be shown advertising.

There have been numerous tropical storms entering Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas over the last 100 years. This is not the first.

The water off southern California is very much colder than that in the Gulf of Mexico or Sea of Cortez. It is much colder than the water off Manhattan in October. Any tropical storm near California will be very much less powerful than a tropical storm along the Gulf coast. Sandy coincided with an exceptionally high tide, and lower Manhattan was flooded because it is barely above sea level.

Hurricanes rotate counter-clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere. It is highly likely the center of the storm will come ashore well south of Los Angeles (or even Orange County.) That means the leading, east on the map but westward-spinning, arms of the storm will pass over land for some time before raining on metro Los Angeles. They will be mostly depleted of water. Here is the current rain forecast from the National Hurricane Center:
HURRICANE HILARY
San Diego to Los Angeles, 2-4 inches of rain. Yes, more than usual, but that is not catastrophic.

Only areas periodically susceptible to flash floods should have any real problems, and everybody knows not to drive into a running wash.

Yes, prepare for some wind and rain, but I suspect your normal Santa Ana winds are more trouble than winds from this storm.

To illustrate the fear factor, in 1997 Hurricane Nora tracked up Baja California from the Pacific and then up the Sea of Cortez directly towards Arizona. Phoenix is around 200 miles or 320km north of the water. The chance of tropical storm winds here from such a storm is zero. Television and radio stations stopped much normal programming for 3 days before the predicted storm arrival. It was constant fearmongering. They showed people boarding up windows with plywood, packing cars for emergency escape and sandbagging houses to prevent water entry.

When Nora finally arrived in Phoenix we had 2 days of partly cloudy weather. That is all.

One would hope that people are smart enough not to drive into a running wash... but seems like someone always does. Likewise, watching 15-20 foot (5-7 m) waves from a jetty at the beach might be "interesting" but likely not a very good idea. Someone always does that too. Natural selection in action.

The Arizona legislature a few years ago passed what we call the Stupid Motorist Law. If you drive around a barricade or into a flowing wash and need to be rescued, you will be billed the full rescue cost.

My property backs up to the Echo Canyon wash, which drains the west side of Camelback Mountain. The wash crosses 40th Street, one of the few ways into my neighborhood. When running it can have 8 feet of water moving at nearly 40 miles / 66km per hour. A few years back a retired police officer drove into it and got stuck.

I agree with all of the above, and I want to point out a few things to clarify my intent:

• This is an unusual event, and I believe it's important to bring those up, especially in populations that might not understand these phenomena.
  
• As proof of my point, we're currently discussing meteorological information that we might not have otherwise discussed, which is a good thing!
  
• I don't own a TV and don't watch the news. I only read international news, which doesn't usually cover these things, and I don't have social media installed on my phone, so the only reason why I'm sharing this is the OSSC president's email I received this morning. I did think it was important to inform some hobbyists because I didn't know anything about this storm until I saw the OSSC email. I am familiar with living through hurricanes, so I thought it would be a good idea to share with others who didn't know about it. Just like me!
  
• I did not investigate the water temperatures, I just saw that there is a watch alert, but because it doesn't necessarily impact me, living in an apartment on the top floor of a concrete structure, I didn't think I needed to stop going about my day to do this research. I did make sure I had my groceries in just in case water floods the streets this weekend and got my camping batteries charged.
  
• Since I didn't do that research, I wouldn't know the real probability of the storm easing or worsening. I just assumed that if an alert was issued, there would be reason for it. Thought maybe being in an El Niño pattern could've caused an unlikely rise in water temps. The temps shared by Roberta are definitely below the threshold.
  
• I would be more concerned about inadvertent damage caused by imprudent neighbors than the storm itself. These winds are forecast to be faster than Santa Ana, and without proper warning, I can see a lot of patio furniture flying around this weekend, which is where, in my view, the real danger lies.

So I don't think discussing this and utilizing the forum as a place for debate and education is necessarily falling for media-induced hysteria. I think we should stay informed!

---------- Post added at 05:16 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:14 PM ----------

I agree that this is crazy!

Because of the tendency of the news media to do what they do... talk endlessly whether or not they have anything new to contribute, I do like to go to a few sources. One is the National Weather Service (NOAA) weather.gov ... you put in your zip code, to get information on your area. Not the easiest site to navigate, but from the local summary page, scroll down to Forecast Summary link. There's some useful discussion there. Also 7 day summary there are estimates of the amount of rain that is anticipated, I also like accuweather.com, reasonable estimates of wind, precipitation, etc. and I have found it to be pretty accurate. wunderground.com also has some good summaries (at the zipcode level). Once the storm actually hits, it also has data from hobbyist weather stations on "wundermap", so hyper-local. The southern California metropolitan area is so big, and so geographically diverse, that to really make any sense of the information, it's necessary to get down to the local level. If you live downhill from a burn area you have different concerns (get out those sand bags!) than if you are on relatively high ground away from flood channels and away from the hills. I make sure all the electronics are charged, since electric wires are overhead and vulnerable to flying palm fronds, mylar balloons, and such.