Storm Hilary update: Death Valley gets one year’s rain in a day as rain hammers California and heads towards Oregon

Footage posted to social media shows rapid lightning strikes hitting as Tropical Storm Hilary approaches California.

The clip posted to Twitter/X shows the sky lighting up in the early hours of 19 August as a thunderstorm hit San Diego.

Southern California faced its its first tropical storm in 84 years, with the threat of flooding, blackouts, high winds and tornadoes.

Millions of Americans were under flood and high-wind warnings as the storm moved north, unleashing heavy rains from the California-Mexico border to Las Vegas and beyond.

Part of a road in Santa Clarita, California, collapsed into storm water after Tropical Storm Hilary made landfall in the state on Sunday, 20 August.

Santa Clarita City officials posted footage on Twitter/X showing part of the concrete crumbling as water gushes.

Residents were urged to move to higher ground immediately and to avoid walking or driving through floodwaters.

A natural El Nino, human-caused climate crisis, a stubborn heat dome over the nation’s midsection and other factors cooked up Tropical Storm Hilary’s record-breaking slosh into California and Nevada, scientists figure.

From the collision of deadly, climate-driven disasters in the United States emerged a small sliver of good fortune on Monday, writes Louise Boyle.

Tropical Story Hillary, which has deluged Mexico, California and Nevada, is now bringing much-needed rain over the wildfires raging in Washington state as the system moves north.

Tropical Storm Hilary is expected to drive north through southern California into Nevada over the course of Monday having already brought heavy rain and flooding to the desert region, forcing rescuers to pull several people from swollen rivers.

Although Hilary has weakened from hurricane status, millions expect more flooding and mudslides to come.

The Pacific front had drifted north along the coast of Mexico’s arid Baja California Peninsula before it made landfall on Sunday in a sparsely populated area about 150 miles south of Ensenada.

Death Valley in California, known for its extremely hot temperatures, saw its “wettest day on record in 112 years” on Sunday, according to data shared by Weather Channel senior meteorologist Jonathan Erdman on Twitter.

Tropical storm Hilary dumped 2.2 inches of rain over Death Valley on Sunday, which also happens to be the average yearly precipitation for the region.

Like the rest of California, Death Valley was also under threat of flooding with the national park remaining close as mud and debris cut off roads.

In a dramatic scene, rescue officials in the desert community of Cathedral City, near Palm Springs, drove a bulldozer through mud to a swamped care home and rescued 14 residents by scooping them up and carrying them to safety, fire chief Michael Contreras said.

They were among 46 rescues the city performed between late on Sunday night and the next afternoon from mud and water standing up to 5 feet (1.5 metres.)

“We were able to put the patients into the scoop. It’s not something that I’ve ever done in my 34 years as a firefighter, but disasters like this really cause us to have to look at those means of rescue that aren’t in the book and that we don’t do everyday,” he said at a news conference.

Tropical Storm Hilary drenched Palm Springs with over half of a year’s worth of rain in mere hours – and cut off the city’s emergency services.

California officials declared a local state of emergency due to “unprecedented rainfall and flooding of local roadways and at least one swift water rescue.” City officials also urged residents to stay home and to “avoid driving during these dangerous conditions.”

Dozens of cars are trapped in floodwaters across the city as well as in surrounding communities, according to ABC7.

“There’s no way in or out of Palm Springs and that’s the case for the majority of the Coachella Valley. We’re all stuck. Our major freeway, I-10, is also closed in both directions. This is a very extreme situation at the moment,” said Palm Springs Mayor Grace Garner on Monday.

Hilary, the first tropical storm to hit Southern California in 84 years, flooded roads, toppled trees and forced a rescue by bulldozer of more than a dozen older residents trapped by mud in a care home on Monday as it now marches northward, prompting flood watches and warnings in half a dozen states.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Hilary had lost much of its steam and only vestiges of the storm were heading over the Rocky Mountains, but it warned that “continued life-threatening and locally catastrophic flooding” was expected over portions of the southwestern US, following record-breaking rainfall.

Forecasters said the threat for flooding in states farther north was highest across much of southeastern Oregon into the west-central mountains of Idaho, with potential thunderstorms and localised torrential rains on Tuesday.