Hilary will continue to intensify in the next day, and although we do not forecast Hilary to reach California as a hurricane, it will come packed with plenty of moisture to wreak havoc across the commonly dry California and its deserts.

Although tropical remnants do reach Southern California and the Southwest region, named tropical systems often do not. Hilary, which has quickly intensified on Thursday morning, could be the first named system to reach southern California since 1997 when Tropical Storm Nora struck the Mexico/California border.

Coincidentally, Hurricane Hilary has a similar track today to Nora’s track in 1997. The difference is that Nora’s remnants ended up moving toward Arizona, while Hilary is still forecast to move as a tropical storm over the southern California coast, near San Diego, and its center is forecast to move northward over western Nevada.

Of course, we do expect this track to shift in the coming days, especially as Hilary continues to intensify and likely reach major category strength as it comes close to the Baja California states in Mexico and then moves to cooler waters and loses its strength. This will be followed by a track over some mountainous terrain over the northern portion of Baja California and some southern California mountains.

The tallest peak of the Sierra of Baja California is the Picacho del Diablo, which extends around 10,150 feet high. This is a similar height to the Pico Duarte in the Dominican Republic, which often disrupts tropical systems moving through Hispaniola.

Regardless of if Hilary still arrives with its name to SoCal or not, there is plenty of rainfall in the forecast for the region. In fact, Southern California and its deserts will become a tropical oasis with similar amounts of rain to what much of Florida is expected to get in the next 7 days (That’s quite a comparison!). The difference will be in the timing. California will get the biggest bulk of the rain from the weekend through Tuesday, while Florida’s bulk of rainfall will be from Tuesday through Thursday.

We will be staffed throughout the weekend to bring you prompt updates on Hilary’s evolution.