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Hilary wasn’t tropical storm when it hit California: NOAA

A city employee retrieves a propane tank from a flooded bridge as tropical storm Hilary makes landfall in Rancho Mirage on Aug. 20, 2023. (JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images)

Last year’s historic tropical storm may not have been so historic after all.

What was initially believed to be Tropical Storm (and former hurricane) Hilary was actually a post-tropical low when it hit California, according to a report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Hurricane Center.


“On its approach to land — and even more so after it made landfall — the thunderstorm activity became increasingly disorganized and it lost its well-defined center at the surface, and those are two necessary criteria for something to be considered a tropical cyclone,” Brad Reinhart, the report’s author and a hurricane specialist with the NHC, told the Los Angeles Times.

With that finding, Southern California’s 84-year streak without a tropical storm remains intact.

Despite losing tropical storm status, Hilary still made a major impact, as it “blew past daily rainfall records across Southern California,” the Times reported in the aftermath.

It also was half of a new weather-related sensation: the “hurriquake” that was created when a magnitude 5.1 earthquake hit near Ojai amid the storm.