Storm Hilary: Flooding cuts off Palm Springs in California

Hilary, the first tropical storm to hit southern California in 84 years, cut off the desert city of Palm Springs after dumping a year's worth of rain.

Major roads in and out of Palm Springs were temporarily closed on Monday by flooding after it was drenched with 3.18in (8cm) of rain.

Rescuers had to save several people there from swollen rivers.

Hilary, now a post-tropical cyclone, could still bring flooding to parts of Nevada, Oregon and Idaho.

The storm made landfall in the northern part of Mexico's Baja California peninsula on Sunday morning.

It quickly crossed the border into the US. Death Valley National Park received a full year's worth of rain in one day, and remains indefinitely closed.

The storm broke single day rainfall for San Diego, Palm Springs and several other California cities, according to the National Weather Service.

Emergency 911 lines went down in Palm Springs, which is about 110 miles (175km) east of Los Angeles, as well as in nearby Cathedral City and Indio, according to officials.

"Right now we have flooding on all of our roads. There's no way in or out of Palm Springs and that's the case for the majority of the Coachella valley. We're all stuck," said Palm Springs Mayor Grace Garner in an interview with CNN on Monday.

"This is a very extreme situation at the moment."

Interstate 10 through Palm Springs - which had been closed in both directions - reopened later on Monday.

During the heaviest rains on Sunday, many Palm Springs residents spent hours sweeping water away from doorways to prevent their homes from flooding, resident Sean Heslin told the BBC.

Just outside of Palm Springs, in Cathedral City, 14 people were trapped in an old people's home as flooding and mud cut off exits. Firefighters rescued them by Monday afternoon.

Fifty mobile homes were under water in the city and firefighters had to rescue four adults.

Schools were closed on Monday, including in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest in the country, because of concerns about driving conditions.

As Californians battened down the hatches for the storm another natural disaster - a magnitude 5.1 earthquake - hit north-west of Los Angeles on Sunday, though without causing major damage.

About 30,000 people in the state were without power as of Monday evening local time after the storm, according to poweroutage.us.

No deaths, serious injuries or major damage have been reported in the US from Hilary.

But one man died in a car in a flash flood in Mexico on Sunday. The Baja California peninsula saw heavy rain and winds of 70mph on Sunday.

The last time a tropical storm made landfall in Southern California was in Long Beach in 1939.

Experts say recent abnormal weather events that have plagued the US - and several areas across the globe - have been influenced by human-caused climate change, external.

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