Quote:
Originally Posted by ethereal_reality
Thanks for solving the pedestrian bridge tragedy, odinthor. It's such a sad story. 
While looking for additional information on the 10 victims (two women, a small boy, four sailors, four civilians)
I happened upon the " Lash of St. Francis" tropical storm that devastated the area the following year. (1939)
"The Lash of St. Francis (El Cordonazo de San Francisco) winds and rains came unexpectedly and suddenly, startling some Long Beachers
who had hit the strand that Monday during a searing summer heat wave that brought record-breaking temperatures of 103 degrees
just a few days earlier. As gales reached 65 mph, the Navy deployed four new destroyers attached to the Battle Fleet,
and the Coast Guard added a pair of cutters to rescue boaters in the Catalina Channel.
In all, 48 people were killed in California, including 24 aboard the vessel Spray (two passengers survived) as it was attempting to dock
near Point Magu and 15 aboard the Ventura fishing boat Lur."
The death toll of the Flood of 1938 was 96 people.
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The Sept. 1939 storm was a Baja hurricane that came up the coast from Mexican waters and grazed the SoCal coast. By the time it hit the cooler waters off SoCal, it was losing strength and was barely a hurricane, perhaps a strong tropical storm. But the winds were significant, above 60 mph in the harbor area. It dumped lots of rain over the area, including in the desert and mountains. Several fishing boasts and other boats were sunk, and lives were lost. The flooding rains killed people as well over the area. An account of the storm can be found on Wikipedia. In summer 1976, a Mexican hurricane called "Kathleen" took a similar path (a bit more east) and came into CA as a weak tropical storm. Like the 1939 storm, it dumped record rain over the area, causing flooding in many areas. Because of the cool water off the CA coast, Mexican hurricanes usually weaken into tropical storms if they move north. The more common path for Mexican hurricanes is to the west or northwest, out into the Pacific towards Hawaii, where they usually remain as hurricanes because of the warm water. One such hurricane hit Kauii in the early '90s as they were filming "Jurassic Park", causing much damage to the island. Sometimes these hurricanes that form off the coasts of Mexico and Central America hold together all the way to Asia, and are then called "typhoons". Much of the monsoonal rains in the southwestern U.S. in late summer and early fall derives from these dying hurricanes.
Perhaps someone can link some of the L.A. Times stories about the storm of 1939 and the storm "Kathleen" in 1976.