High tides already flooding streets in three beach cities
Tropical Storm Rachel changed course and is moving northeast toward the Southern California and Mexico coasts, the National Hurricane Center said in its 8 a.m. update. The center placed the storm 391 miles southwest of Punta Baja, Mexico, and 520 miles south-southwest of San Diego, with maximum sustained winds of 60 mph. Rachel was moving northeast at 22 mph.
Tropical storm conditions are expected to begin on the west coast of the Baja California peninsula by Saturday evening. The Mexican government has extended the Tropical Storm Warning along the peninsula’s west coast southward to Punta Eugenia, and a tropical storm watch is in effect for the Southern California coast from the Mexico border to the San Diego-Orange County line.
The storm is arriving as seasonal high tides are already pushing water into coastal streets. Rachel will produce 6- to 10-foot waves along much of the coast, especially at beaches facing southwest, The San Diego Tribune reported. Seasonal high tides that will rise to the 6.5- to 7-foot level are expected, and both the high tides and Rachel’s surf are forecast to add to the flooding.
Laguna Beach, Newport Beach and Long Beach, Calif., saw high tides about 16 inches higher than expected, flooding streets and sidewalks.
“We’ve got water that’s already high and then we’re going to have periods of high tides each morning and evening and then on top of that we have high surf,” Miguel Miller, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in San Diego, told the Los Angeles Times. “We have all these things stacking up on each other and we’ve already seen in recent weeks how just the high tides, even without the large surf, is putting water into places where it doesn’t usually go.”