Calgarians recount earthquake, extreme weather from Hurricane Hilary

Calgarians recounted extreme weather and earthquakes from Hurricane Hilary after returning from California and Nevada on Monday.

The storm first made landfall in Mexico’s arid Baja California peninsula on Sunday in a sparsely-populated area about 250 kilometres south of Ensenada. It then moved through mudslide-prone Tijuana, threatening the improvised homes that cling to hillsides just south of the U.S. border.

The first tropical storm to hit Southern California in 84 years, Hilary dropped more than half an average year’s worth of rain on some areas, including the desert resort city of Palm Springs, which saw nearly 3 inches (7.6 centimeters) of rain by Sunday evening.

Jose Lorenz Manlapig was in Southern California for a wedding when a magnitude 5.1 earthquake hit the area on Sunday hours after Hurricane Hilary brought torrential rain.

The 5.1-magnitude quake struck seven kilometres southeast of Ojai, a mountain community 130 kilometres northwest of Los Angeles.

He said it was raining non-stop with strong winds, which made driving treacherous. However, he did not see any damage caused by the earthquake and hurricane.

“We were worried for everyone. We weren’t sure if we were able to get to the venue or event,” he told Global News. “Thank God we were able to finish everything on time.”

The hurricane didn’t just affect Californians.

Kaitee and Zafeer Dosaa were in Las Vegas for a vacation with her family and said the weather was “bizarre.”

On Sunday, Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo made a disaster declaration after the hurricane moved east into the state. Flooding was reported, along with power outages and boil-water orders for around 400 households in the Mount Charleston area, around 60 kilometres west of Las Vegas.

The storm was projected to weaken as it continued moving northward over California and into Nevada, but Richard Pasch, a hurricane specialist with the National Hurricane Center, said “very heavy” rain and strong winds are still likely.

Dosaa remembered seeing the sky above the strip go dark when the storm rolled in. She told Global News she and her family were scheduled to fly out on Monday but opted for a morning flight because the weather was forecast to get worse in the evening.

“It was bizarre. The weather (in Las Vegas) felt like the weather in Mexico. It was hot and humid, even though it’s a desert,” Kaitee said.

“We go to Vegas often and seeing that there is so bizarre. Everyone was hiding and ducking from the rain.”

Zafeer said a lot of roads were closed in the Las Vegas Valley as a result of the storm.

“(The rain) got progressively worse … Within two minutes, it was coming down hard,” he said.

“One car swerved off the road and hit a palm tree and it’s weird to see, especially in Vegas where you don’t experience that very often.”

— with files from Christopher Weber, Damian Dovarganes and Jordi Lebrija, the Associated Press.