The National Weather Service says it\u2019s studying whether an El Ni\u00f1o-enhanced tropical storm that\u2019s developing off southwest Mexico will curve to the north-northwest and hit San Diego County with heavy rain and big waves over the Labor Day weekend.<\/p>\n
Forecast models indicate that the system, which will be known as Marie when it\u2019s more fully defined, is most likely to head straight out to sea below the tip of Baja California.<\/p>\n
But scientists note that the ocean is unusually warm and will pick up additional heat from El Ni\u00f1o, a coupling that could result in the system angling more toward land. It\u2019s also possible that Marie will grow into a large hurricane, increasing its ability to throw off rain at great distances.<\/p>\n
The situation is causing a bit of unease because scientists believe one of the strongest El Ni\u00f1os on record will hit Southern California this fall and winter and Marie may be a sample of what\u2019s to come.<\/p>\n
The emerging storm represents \u201ca roll of the dice situation,\u201d said Jay Cordeira, an atmospheric scientist at UC San Diego\u2019s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. \u201cThere\u2019s a low probability that the system would come our way. But it could happen because the water is so warm.\u201d<\/p>\n
He noted that the sea-surface temperature exceeded 80 degrees last week at a buoy off northern San Diego County. That\u2019s at least eight degrees above normal.<\/p>\n
The weather service says the potential risks from Marie include \u201cthe risk for coastal flooding as astronomical high tides will occur the week of Labor Day.\u201d Tropical swells are roughly forecast to arrive Saturday and Sunday, coinciding with high tides of up to 6\u00bd feet.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnticipated wave heights will depend on the track of the storm, so these remain uncertain. It is still way too early to discuss expected rainfall totals,\u201d the weather service noted. However, even with a storm track farther out to sea, \u201ctropical moisture may still be funneled into the area during Labor Day Weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n
The situation is also being closely monitored by Surfline, the Huntington Beach-based marine forecasting service.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile there is some uncertainty on the would-be Marie\u2019s longer-range track, it will be on a northwest track in the shorter term (next 2-3 days),\u201d said Kevin Wallis, a Surfline forecaster.<\/p>\n
\u201cMarie will be a large to potentially very large tropical cyclone on a favorable track for SoCal swell production mid to late this week. Good chance we\u2019ll see a strong southeast to south-southeast angled swell build through the coming weekend, which could be the largest tropical swell of this active season.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tropical storms rarely make a direct hit on San Diego. But it happens. Hilary rolled ashore as a tropical storm on Aug. 20, 2023, bringing heavy rain and wild winds that affected virtually all of Southern California.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The National Weather Service says it\u2019s studying whether an El Ni\u00f1o-enhanced tropical storm that\u2019s developing off southwest Mexico…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1036859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,20161,1370,728,50,8738,3549,3550,7264,34159,7289,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,313],"class_list":["post-1036858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-america","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-east-county","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-north-county","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-county","tag-sandiego","tag-south-county","tag-top-stories-sdut","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-weather"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1036858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1036859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1036858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1036858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1036858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}