Friday’s damage arrived while Tropical Storm Rachel was still roughly 800 miles southwest of San Diego. Powerful swell and high tides pushed seawater across Newport Beach’s Balboa Peninsula, flooding an estimated 15 to 20 blocks, trapping cars and reaching homes well inland. Utilities Director Mark Vukojevic said the tide ran 20 inches above its predicted level — an event he called unprecedented.¹

Newport Beach declared a local emergency, deployed pumps and crews, and began rebuilding beach barriers. In Long Beach, waves breached a protective bulkhead, ripped up parts of the boardwalk and left beachfront buildings unsafe. The damage sharpened fears that months of erosion had stripped away the sand buffer communities once relied on.¹

By Saturday, Rachel had shifted south and was reclassified as a post-tropical cyclone as it approached northern Baja California. That technical downgrade did not reassure forecasters: the National Hurricane Center and weather service still anticipated major coastal flooding, dangerous surf and flash flooding from heavy rain. Weather service meteorologist Adam Roser said, “We will start seeing it come late tonight and tomorrow.”²

Officials responded as if the coastline’s defenses were already failing. Long Beach ordered some Peninsula residents to evacuate through Tuesday, red-tagged eight structures and began placing as much as 100,000 cubic yards of sand along the shore. Newport Beach contractors worked into the weekend reinforcing berms; City Manager Seimone Jurjis said the goal was to protect “as many vulnerable locations as possible before the next high tide.”²

By Sunday, Rachel’s landfall in northern Baja brought further flooding and erosion across Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties. Yet the feared peak tide did not match the most severe projections. The immediate crisis eased, but Long Beach homes remained teetering, evacuation orders stayed in force and inspectors faced the longer question: whether damaged shoreline properties could safely remain standing.³