Category Archives: flash Floods

Before the Storm …

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A storm is brewing. As yet unnamed, but gathering itself together off the coast of Mexico. A hot swirling mass of clouds, interacting, trying to figure out how best to work with one another. What to become? Forecasts now 90%, the chances of becoming a tropical depression, and then a hurricane. Trajectory to skirt the western edge of the Baja, snaking alongside the coastline all the way into southern California. El Niño beginning to clearly show his face.

There’s an anxiousness associated with incoming storms. A tingling in my fingertips. A slow building race in my heart rate. The unknown unsettling. The questions that remain, unanswerable. The timing. The where. The force and power of the wind. The probable amount of rain.

Preparations: Secure the property. Move outdoor patio furniture indoors or garage it. Relocate anything that might become a projectile. Check food supplies. Water. Propane. Flashlights. Candles. Satellite phone. Board games or jigsaw puzzles for the duration. Hope that the hurricane glass doors and windows perform as advertised.

Again, the unknowing.

We desperately need rain, so a part of me screams, bring it. The desert begging. The dry and desiccated cardon and tarote shriveling downward in response to seven years of drought. Here in southern Baja, it seems feast or famine. Too much water, too fast, turns dry arroyos into raging rivers. Shuts off vehicle access. Blessed water pours from the sky, and no place or way to store the same.

NOAA Hurricane Center checked multiple times per day. The waiting.. the waiting …

The Aftermath of Kay

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Hurricane Kay’s arms extended 600 miles

Water water everywhere. That’s Kay’s swan song, with arroyos washing out roads along the entire peninsula. She wasn’t even a strong hurricane – a category 2 in her heaviest moment – but she was grand – huge arms nearly 600 miles across. Her winds ran as high as 72mph in various locations, but her water. The rain. The desperately needed rain came all at once, the ground crusty dry. No way to absorb, but rush and run down the mountain faces and arroyos.

Day before Hurricane Kay heading toward Insurgentes
Same Road – two days after Hurricane Kay

Multiple towns took hard hits. The Mulege river once again breached its banks, flooding everyone and thing in proximity. San Felipe, usually a dry sandy desert, found itself with streets of rivers, more suited to kayaks or canoes.

The major effect of Kay was on MEX 1 the transpeninsular highway that transits between Tijuana and Cabo San Lucas. The road cut in so many places that traffic and commerce were actually halted for three days. Today, the 13th of September, most roads have some measure of passage, and the large double tractor trailers could be seen heading south. Below, some photographs, borrowed from various posts and publications, communicate what my words lack.

Between Vizcaino & Guerro Negro
San Felipe
Jesus Maria
Between Loreto & Santa Rosalia
Guerro Negro
Mex 1 North
Toward Mexicali
Jesus Maria

Close to home, or the home I cannot yet reach, the highway between Insurgentes and San Juanico washed out first in Insurgentes, and then the bridge was obliterated over the wash a few miles outside of town.

Arroyo crossing (or lack of) near San Juanico
Arroyo crossing (or lack of) near San Juanico

The townspeople came together, and with shovels and arms full of rock and mud, began the process of crafting a crossing. It’s this spirit of ‘can-do’ which continues to fuel my love for Baja.

Arroyo Work (photo: Jenny Smith)
Arroyo Work (photo: Jenny Smith)

The Thing About Hurricanes ….

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The thing about hurricanes is that you wait.  You wait.  And you watch.  And you wait.

You watch the forecasts. You follow the track.  You read winds and rainfall predictions.  And you wait.

Hurricane Wind Pattern Stimulation with Speed Indicators – Sunday Afternoon
Satellite imagery: Hurricane Blanca June 7th, 1pm Baja Sur Time.

Increasingly accurate science guides minute by minute revised assessments.  Aircraft fly into the heart of the storm, measure the winds, the barometric pressure … Weather crew assess surrounding patterns – how point of high and low pressure will affect the movement of the storm.

And you wait.  A sunny morning grows cloudy. Then clears. Then darkens again.  The rises.  Then falls.  You watch the tides. Time landfall land with wind speed predictions.

This time, this early .. Hurricane Blanca ‘appears’ to bear wind and rain, and will approach land as tropical storm, her energy spent as she enters cooler waters.  A glancing blow.  A prayer or two.

And you wait ….

The Track of Hurricane Odile

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Horricane Odile's Track up the Spine of Baja

Horricane Odile’s Track up the Spine of Baja

I am a storm watcher/lover .. but this one, Odile, may be hard to love. While I’ve been stateside for the duration, my heart and energies have been focused on Baja – the long skinny peninsula that is my second home.

Odile – as you can see from the graphic – drove straight up the spine of Baja and has been called ‘the most powerful hurricane to ever hit Baja’. Her track was unusual – the bulk of her interaction with land was on top of land, not at sea. She maintained hurricane status for the bulk of her journey. The desert cannot absorb rain when it comes too hard and too fast, and rushes down canyons and flashes out arroyos to the sea. And then there was the wind …

Power is out. Phones are down. The early photographs of Cabo show horrible damages – and to a city that has a very substantial infrastructure and in new construction, modern building codes. The rest of the Baja – maybe not so.

It’s horrible not knowing what happened to my neighbors and the town. One video shot from the top of the Mission Hotel shows waves breaking on to of the malecon. I can only imagine that the streetfront businesses had minor to major flooding.

A brief cell phone call late yesterday afternoon from my next door neighbor – how it got through I have no idea – said that her house was totally flooded from the horizontal rain – that she’d gone through all the towels – wrung them out – and the water was still coming in. Her fans had been ripped off – and then she had to go. No power to recharge her one lifeline to the outside world.

Loreto was hard hit – that’s obvious from the storm track and early reports before power was cut. But Loreto, too, has a decent infrastructure – and some of the most resilient people I have ever known. All of Baja for that matter. Shovels, mops, bulldozers will be hard at work before the rain drizzles have stopped.

The most pressing issue will be the roads and flash flooding that Odile has likely caused. Mex One is the lifeblood of the peninsula and trucking of supplies has the one route north and south. Unlike the states, when the roads was out, everyone that is able jumps into help. Tractors tow semi-trucks through washing and mud-laden arroyos. Boulders get moved off the road. New paths are created around obstacles. There is no shutting down the highway for months while surveyors decide what to do and budgets have to be settled and contracts awarded. Nope. Just get on with getting on and move people and goods. Detailed repairs will happen later.

This morning, all prayers to those who lost homes, autos – whatever Odile threw at them. And hopes that hands together, a speedy recovery can be made.

And then .. there is the next storm.  Really? Polo? Please please head west …….

None of the forecasts look good …

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Hurricane Odile set to make landfall / Cat 3 Storm

Hurricane Odile set to make landfall / Cat 3 Storm

With Odile just miles from Cabo San Lucas, winds and rain blast their way across the region. 22 airlines canceled flights in and out of city. Evacuations of up to 30,000 people are possible. Forecast is for up to 18″ of rain – okay – that’s a LOT OF RAIN!!! And sustained winds at around 135 mph. The imagery looks as if the storm is swallowing the Baja.