The last and only tropical storm to make landfall in California since the beginning of the 20th century was in September. A hurricane approached the Los Angeles area, but lost its strength just before making landfall in San Pedro as a tropical storm. A California hurricane is a tropical cyclone affecting the state of California. Usually, only the remains of tropical cyclones affect California.
Since 1900, only two still-tropical storms have hit California, one because they made landfall directly from the coast and the other after making landfall in Mexico. No full-fledged hurricane is likely to make landfall in Southern California, although in October it is believed to have been a Category 1 storm at the time. Heavy rain and strong winds were reported in both San Diego and the Los Angeles area. Dear Tom: I used to live in the Chicago area, but have since settled in the Los Angeles area.
People often ask me if there are ever hurricanes in Southern California. To answer this question, we must consider several factors that must be present for a hurricane to occur. In short, wind direction and cold water are the main reasons why we don't see hurricanes in California. The only known system that actually made landfall was the 1939 Long Beach Tropical Storm.
It was formerly a hurricane that formed in front of Central America and made a rare change from a westerly to an eastward movement before making landfall in San Pedro. As the storm moved north, Southern California broke out under a torrid heat wave, with a recorded temperature of 107.2 degrees in Los Angeles in September. In early September 1997, another year in El Niño, Hurricane Linda, one of the strongest hurricanes in the eastern Pacific in history, threatened Los Angeles. If there's a silver lining to Tropical Storm Cordonazo in September 1939, it's that before the storm, there was no government forecast office in Los Angeles.
San Gorgonio Mountain northwest of Palm Springs received 14.5 inches; Lake Arrowhead reported 8.71 inches; the Civic Center in downtown Los Angeles got 1.98 inches. In Los Angeles that month, as residents were sweating from an unusual heat wave and nervously watching the storm clouds from World War II accumulating abroad, four tropical cyclones were born that would affect Southern California in the eastern North Pacific. It hit Southern California with wind gusts of up to 65 mph, according to the Los Angeles Times, which damaged ships, structures, utility lines and crops. Yuma can experience more storms than other parts of California due to its location near the Gulf of California bathtub where water temperatures can reach 90 degrees during summer months - making it something of a 'hurricane alley'.
Then, in 1939, there were four such storms in the space of a month, including an unnamed tropical storm that landed in San Pedro, dropping a total of 5.62 inches of torrential rain in Los Angeles starting in September.
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