Hurricanes in California?

Assuming that sea temperatures rise in a uniform and linear fashion, does anyone know how much of a rise in sea temperatures it would take to put Southern California on track for hurricanes like they get in Baja?

Would the cool upwelling stop a hurricane, or would a hurricane have such momemtum that it wouldn't even blink at a small cold water area?

:shrug:

hit san diego a long time ago. it was a possible still-hurricane based on wind speed and direction only.

every few years we get heavy rain and thunderstorms from moisture from decaying hurricans that are dying to below tropical storm level. not usually a lot of strong wind in a general area, just higher winds near thunderstorms.

the cold water kills the heat engine that drives the storms, leaving them floundering.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

And they were strong enough to cross Mexico on very lucky winds. The necessary conditions are pretty rare, though. They only place you would see Pacific-spawned hurricanes are off the east coast of Asia. There are powerful storms that spawn in the Pacific and can hit the North American west coast, but these storms work on a different dynamic and do not meet the definition of "hurricane."

El Nino year, when we had severe thunderstorms several times in July, and rain so hard the streets flooded. Never had anything remotely like it since. And nobody had ever seen it before then.

Summer consists of endless heat and relentless, cloudless, airless weather. No breezes, even (until the blast furnace starts in the fall).

We also get summer thunderstorms sometimes... also, the subtropical jet isn't that far down there.

Hurricanes spawn in warmer water and travel with the prevailing wind and water currents. In the northern hemisphere, these currents run clockwise, which is why when you look at global sattelite photos, Carribbean hurricanes spawn off the coast of Africa, travel west parallel to the equator then head north along the coast of North America. To get hurricanes in California, you would need the storms to spawn off the coast of Russia or Alaska; if that were to happen, the water and air off California would be too hot to sustain the storm.

Not too far to the south...

Warmer water may push them further north,

The only way a hurricane could occur off the coast of California would be for one to cross Mexico and Baja, and then have wind currents push it north in the Pacific. For this to happen, established weather patterns would have to break down so badly that hurricanes off the coast of California would be the least of our worries.

:eyes:

Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic coast..........it would take a lot more ocean warming for this to be a problem, I suspect.......but eventually YES, it can happen here........

One of the worst storms ever to hit the Pacific Northwest was the Columbus day storm of 1962. With pressures as low as 960 millibars, it was later rated as equivalent to a category 3 hurricane. One can argue over definitions, but that storm blew down well over a billion board feet of timber and caused massive property damage in a Puget Sound region much more sparsely populated than today. The clip below is from Wikipedia, but if you gooogle "Columbus day storm" you will find many interesting links. It made a lasting impression.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_Day_Storm

"A tropical storm named Freda formed about 500 miles/800 km from Wake Island in the central Pacific ocean.<2> The system became an extratropical cyclone as it moved into colder waters and interacted with the jet stream. The low redeveloped explosively off of Northern California due to favorable upper level conditions. The low moved northeastward, and then hooked straight north as it neared southwest Oregon. The storm then raced nearly northward at an average speed of 40 mph (64 km/h) or greater, with the center just 50 miles (80 km) off of the Pacific Coast. There was little central pressure change until the cyclone passed the latitude of Astoria, Oregon, at which time the low began to degrade. The center passed over Tatoosh Island, Washington, before landing on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, where it weakened rapidly. As the cyclone moved through Canada a new cyclone formed on its southern periphery, which merged with this cyclone by October 17.<3>


Pressures reported with the cyclone
The extratropical wave cyclone deepened to a minimum central pressure of at least 960 hPa (28.35 inHg), and perhaps as low as 958 hPa (28.30 inHg), a pressure which would be equivalent to a Category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale. Since it was an extratropical cyclone, its wind field was neither as compact, nor as strong as a tropical cyclone. All-time record-low land-based pressures (up to 1962) included 969.2 hPa (28.62 inHg) at Astoria, 970.5 hPa (28.66 inHg) at Hoquiam, Washington, and 971.9 hPa (28.70 inHg) at North Bend, Oregon. The Astoria and Hoquiam records were broken by a major storm on December 12, 1995 (966.1 hPa at Astoria)—this event, however, did not generate winds as intense as the Columbus Day storm of 1962."

A fair number of tropical storms begin off the west coast of the Americas, but they generally head out into the Pacific. I think a monster land-strike on the west coast would take a rare alignment of the planets.