Tropical Storm Karina is increasingly drawing attention from forecasters, with new projections suggesting the system could rapidly intensify into a major hurricane while some computer models point toward a possible, high-impact track near California.
The National Hurricane Center said Karina, now packing sustained winds above 50 mph, could become a hurricane as soon as Friday night if strengthening continues as expected.
By Sunday morning, the storm is forecast to grow into a powerful Category 3 hurricane, a classification given to systems with winds topping 111 mph.
Fresh spaghetti models — which map a range of possible storm tracks — now show several scenarios that could steer Karina toward the California coast, raising concerns about potential effects for millions of residents.
Earlier runs of the American forecasting model, known as the GFS, included multiple outcomes that would bring the storm toward a rare and potentially historic landfall near San Diego or Los Angeles.
The European model, formally called the EPS Ensemble, initially offered a less alarming outlook on Thursday, suggesting Karina would remain offshore and curve away from the California coastline.
But updated forecasts released Friday shifted the picture, with both major models now indicating possible tracks toward Southern California as well as areas farther up the coast.
No hurricane has ever made landfall in California in the modern historical record, according to the National Weather Service, and the state has not seen a direct tropical storm impact since 1997.
Tropical Storm Karina (Seen on radar) is expected to become a major hurricane by Sunday, August 30
Beachgoers in San Diego (Pictured) may see the first tropical storm or hurricane near Southern California in nearly 30 years next week (Stock Image)
Forecasts predict Karina will reach hurricane status by Friday night
A tropical storm has not taken such a path, from the Pacific Ocean straight into the California Coast, in nearly a century, when the Long Beach Tropical Storm landed in 1939.
It is important to note that forecast models can shift dramatically once storms form and get closer to making landfall. The farther into the future a forecast model tries to predict, the weaker the certainty of it being correct gets.
Spaghetti models, which show a large sampling of weather predictions, also reveal a great amount of uncertainty about a hurricane when they show paths going in several different directions – which is the current case with Karina.
The more tightly clustered the spaghetti models are, the more confident meteorologists are in the route of a storm.
Tropical Storm Karina is currently less than 1,400 miles south from San Diego and is moving northwest at 13 mph far offshore from the coast of Mexico.
Three years ago, Hurricane Hilary impacted Southern California, but weather officials later determined that the storm was no longer a named cyclone when it made landfall.
The last time the state was struck by an actual tropical storm was in 1997 when a weakening Hurricane Nora crossed from Mexico into the US still at tropical storm strength.
In 2026, AccuWeather’s lead long range forecaster Paul Pastelok has warned that the stage is set for a historic storm to reach California, thanks to the emergence of the weather phenomenon El Niño.
Spaghetti models, such as the American model (Pictured), project that Karina may turn to the northeast and make landfall in California
The European forecasting model, which predicted on Thursday that Karina would avoid the US, was updated to reveal a possible path towards the US West Coast
El Niño is a natural weather phenomenon that simply means that the Pacific Ocean has become noticeably warmer than its historical average.
However, this warming flips global weather patterns, causing storms to become more potent and capable of lasting longer in the Pacific, while weakening in the Atlantic.
AccuWeather meteorologists have predicted that this year’s El Niño will likely be the strongest in recorded history, with sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific rising by 4.8°F (2.66°C).
This would count as a ‘Super’ El Niño, meaning Pacific temperatures have risen by more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2.0 degrees Celsius).
Pastelok told Our News Outlet in June: ‘There could be some insane flooding that could take place, not only just in the summer, but it could even be out of season as well into the wintertime.’
‘You gotta watch the combination of the monsoon and marine heatwave. A marine heatwave that’s near the Baja, with El Niño combined, you’ve got three things working to possibly produce some unusual type of wet weather in Southern California, Phoenix, Tucson, in that area there.’
This is a breaking story. More details to follow.
Pictured: A maintenance vehicle clears mud near stranded vehicles along a flooded street after Tropical Storm Hilary struck Cathedral City, California on August 21, 2023 (File Image)
