Long before Hurricane Hilary, 'El Cordonazo' or 'the Lash of St. Francis' devastated Long Beach and San Pedro in September 1939.
Tropical cyclones in the Pacific basin rarely range north to California. In 1939 there were four in one month.Hilary has brought back memories of another far bigger and more dangerous tropical storm — nicknamed El Cordonazo or the Lash of St. Francis — that hit Long Beach and San Pedro in September 1939.wrote a chronicle in 2019 of the eventThe Times in 1939 covered the tropical storm that battered the Southland, damaging boats, utility lines and crops.
Hurricane Hilary, upgraded from a tropical storm, could slam Southern California and the southwestern U.S. this weekend with heavy rain, wind and surf. On Sept. 23, the temperature reached 100 degrees at the federal building downtown. About 4:40 p.m., a light rain fell, cooling the city slightly. That same day, a thunderstorm dumped 6.45 inches of rain in six hours on Indio. Moisture from one of the two previous cyclones that had broken up a week earlier south of Ensenada, Mexico, may have fueled that thunderstorm.
Rain intensified overnight and was especially heavy between 1 a.m. and 8 a.m. on Sept. 25. The rain let up from 10:15 a.m. until 5:35 p.m. that day, then resumed and continued through 1:15 a.m. Sept. 26.
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