Should the West Coast Worry About Hurricanes?

People along the country’s West Coast have enough natural disasters to keep their anxiety levels elevated – earthquakes, landslides, wildfires and floods.

But hurricanes that plague their East Coast counterparts, not much.  In fact tsunamis are far more likely.

While more than 80 tsunamis have affected California in 150 years, according to a state report, according to NASA, there is no documented case of a hurricane directly hitting California.

The only known hurricane to affect California came in 1858, according to a NASA synopsis of researchers’ reconstruction. It headed toward San Diego but turned to dissipate around Santa Catalina Island. Winds of around 75 mph, or hurricane strength, were recorded in San Diego along with 7 inches of rain, NASA said.

Such a storm might be expected every 200 years, according to NASA.

Still, the eastern portion of the Pacific Ocean has its hurricane season, one that starts May 15 and ends Nov. 30 and typically produces more storms than the Atlantic season.

“We just don’t hear a lot about the Eastern Pacific hurricanes because most form off the coast of Mexico and go out into the Pacific and sometimes west to impact Hawaii,” said Dennis Feltgen, spokesman for the National Hurricane Center in Miami where forecasters track Atlantic and Pacific basin storms.

Hurricane experts really weren’t aware how many storms the eastern Pacific produced until the era of satellites in the 1960s, he said.

An area of high pressure called the Pacific High squatting off the California coast usually shoulders storms into the open ocean and buffers the California coast.  Also, the California Current funnels cold water along the coast that would starve approaching hurricanes that are powered by ocean heat.

California may have avoided a hurricane’s direct hit, but the West Coast has had some brushes.

One of the most recent was in 1997 when Hurricane Linda, at one point a Category 5 and possibly the most powerful Eastern Pacific storm on record, barreled toward California, though by then weakened to a tropical storm, a hurricane center report said. Forecast models aimed it at Southern California.

Linda curved before hitting land but the tropical storm dumped heavy rain and brought crushing waves to the coast.

Also, some storms curve back into Mexico and can bring their tropical moisture into Southwestern states. One was Hurricane Kathleen in 1976 that hit the Baja and moved into Arizona and California as a tropical storm with up to a foot of rain and caused 12 deaths.