Los Angeles County Sheriff Karen Bass explains the aftermath of Hurricane Hilary’s hurricane that triggered a tropical storm warning for the state of California

California is notoriously dry this time of year. Yet, over the course of a single day this weekend, some desert areas were hit with more than a year’s worth of rainfall.

Hurricane Hilary threw California into a state of emergency after more than 80 years without a tropical storm making landfall there. It will most likely stay a rare occurrence for California, as this kind of storm is unusual. Even so, strange and extreme weather is a hallmark of climate change. And experts say it could have more curveballs in store that the state should be preparing for.

In the future, there probably won’t be many more hurricanes moving into the southwestern US. But when they do happen, they’ll be much more like Hilary,” says David Easterling, chief of the Climate Assessments Section and director of the National Climate Assessment Technical Support Unit at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.

Hilary strengthened into a Category 4 hurricane over the Pacific but weakened into a tropical storm before making landfall on Mexico’s Baja California peninsula on Sunday and then barreling northward into the Southwestern US.

There was a vehicle that was washed away by water in Mexico. The storm brought with it a tropical storm warning for California, where the worst of its rain occurred on Sunday. The aftermath is still coming to light. But the worst hit areas got upwards of 11 inches of rain, recorded on Mount San Jacinto and at Raywood Flat east of Los Angeles. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said at a press conference that there have been no deaths or significant risk of injury as of right now.

The Las Vegas Valley Water District in Nevada imposed a boil water order for some residents because of the flooding caused by the remnants of that storm.

How Tropical Tropical Hurricanes Created in the Desert: Hilary’s Flood, Debris Flows, and Emergency Medical Evacuation

The impact of storms depends on the capacity of a community to survive them, according to an associate scientist at the JohnHopkins Whiting School of Engineering.

Hilary’s deluge has caused widespread flooding and debris flows—roaring rivers of mud, boulders, and trees—destroying homes and businesses and overwhelming people in their cars. There is no way to get in or out of Palm Springs as of Monday morning, according to the mayor.

Officials have only begun to calculate the damage. And while it will take some time for scientists to fully work out how much climate change contributed to Hilary’s destruction, such storms will likely get more and more ferocious as the world warms.

There are hurricanes in the eastern Pacific and Recurves north toward Mexico on an average of every two to three years. When it makes landfall, it loses that source of moist heat energy from the ocean and dissipates. Hilary was a tropical storm at the time of it’s landfall in Baja California, but became a post-tropical cyclone when it moved through Nevada. The storm’s remnants might then travel into the southwest US, interacting with mountains and dropping their moisture as rain.