Palm Springs Hit by Biggest Rain Storm in Its Entire History

As Tropical Storm Hilary begins to ravage Southern California, record-breaking levels of rain and dangerous flash floods are being seen in the storm's path. Hilary is the first tropical storm to make landfall in California in over 84 years.

As the storm moves across the state, severe rainfall is being forecast on Monday morning across Southern California and Nevada.

On Sunday, Palm Springs, out in the Sonoran Desert, recorded 2.06 inches of rainfall between midnight and around 4.30 p.m local time, a record for the date, Governor Gavin Newsom said at a news conference. This marked "the most significant rainfall over a 60-minute period anytime in the history of Palm Springs."

Several main roads were closed and a local emergency declared as the town saw half a year's worth of rain in just a six-hour period: Palm Springs usually only gets 0.14 inches of rain across the whole of August, and 4.61 inches a year.

The previous record for the same date was a mere 0.21 inches, seen in 2003.

The storm has maximum wind speeds of around 40 mph, the NWS shows, and is drenching much of Southern California. Other areas of the state experienced record-breaking rainfall on Sunday, with the weather station for Los Angeles at the University of Southern California measuring 1.53 inches, smashing the record for the same date of 0.03 inches measured in 1906. Long Beach saw 1.56 inches and Los Angeles International Airport saw 1.28 inches. Both their previous records for the same date were "trace."

This deluge poses a risk of flash flooding, with the NWS predicting that large areas of Southern California have at least a 70 percent chance of experiencing flash floods.

"THIS IS LIFE THREATENING FLOODING!!!!!!" NWS Los Angeles said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. "DANGEROUS FLOODING IN THE AREA BETWEEN POINT DUME...POINT MUGU...CAMARILLO...WESTLAKE VILLAGE...SOMIS AND SPANISH HILLS."

The storm's severity is expected to abate as it continues to move across the land, however.

"The heaviest rainfall and strongest winds will continue until about midnight, then decrease from south to north overnight through early Monday morning," NWS San Diego posted to X.

The extreme weather comes at the same time that a magnitude 5.1 earthquake shook the state, and wildfires have scorched Northern California and beyond.

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