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A Category 4 that arrived as a puddle and still flooded Arizona

Hurricane Rosa was a 2018 Pacific storm that traced an unusual path from an African tropical wave, crossing the Atlantic and Central America before organizing in the Gulf of Tehuantepec in late September. Once conditions turned favorable, it intensified rapidly into a powerful Category 4 hurricane with 150 mph winds, then just as quickly fell apart as it curved north into cooler water, wind shear, and dry air. By the time it reached Baja California on October 2 it was only a weak tropical depression, making it the first system to hit that peninsula since 1997, though by then little remained of its original strength. Its remnants pushed into the Gulf of California before merging with another weather system off the California coast.

Despite its weakened state, Rosa dumped enormous amounts of rain across northwestern Mexico, triggering floods, sinkholes, and landslides in places like San Felipe, Puerto Peñasco, and Manzanillo, and destroying tens of thousands of acres of crops in Michoacán when combined with a separate tropical storm. One woman drowned in Sonora, and damage across Baja California alone reached nearly two million dollars. Authorities had issued evacuation plans and various coastal alerts beforehand, and several Mexican cities later declared states of emergency as cleanup began.

The storm's remnants did even more damage once they crossed into the American Southwest, dropping over six inches of rain on parts of Arizona and causing widespread flash flooding from California to Nevada and Utah. Two traffic deaths occurred in Arizona and another driver drowned in California, while a dam near Sells, Arizona came dangerously close to failing, forcing hundreds of residents to evacuate for two weeks. Flooding also interacted oddly with a recent wildfire burn scar in Utah, altering the chemistry of nearby streams. Total flood damage in the United States reached about fifty million dollars, and the following year federal highway funds were still being used to repair roads and a hillside washed out by the storm.

Rosa was the first tropical cyclone to make landfall in Baja California in 21 years, since Nora in 1997 and by then it had been reduced to a tropical depression.

Read the whole of Hurricane Rosa (2018) on Wikipedia

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