Hurricane Hilary reached Category 4 status on Friday morning, and the National Hurricane Center issued its first-ever tropical storm watch for Southern California, as the entire southwestern region braces for heavy rains, high surf, and flash flooding.

11:40 AM: ABC News reports Hilary has been downgraded to a Category 3 storm.

Saturday 8:40AM: Hilary remains a Category 4 storm as of Saturday morning with winds up to 130MPH.

Update: The tropical storm watch was extended to all of Los Angeles County, and much of Ventura County, as of 3 p.m. PST Friday.

The storm, off the west coast of Mexico and moving northwards as of midday Friday, has maximum sustained winds of 145 miles per hour. Hurricane watches have been issued for Baja California, and a tropical storm watch for San Diego and Orange counties.

NBC News noted:

A tropical storm watch is now in effect from the California-Mexico border to the county lines between Orange and Los Angeles counties, as well as for Catalina Island, the National Hurricane Center announced this morning.

This is the first time the NHC has issued a tropical storm watch for this region of the country.

Heavy rainfall is also expected, especially in the inland mountains and desert regions, which are normally dry this time of year.

Hurricanes commonly form in August and September off the Mexican coast, bringing warm water and humid air to Southern California, but the storms themselves rarely move north. Most move west across the Pacific Ocean without hitting California.

It is not clear where the hurricane will make landfall, but officials expect it to weaken by the time it nears the U.S. Rains are expected in interior regions by Saturday, and at the coast on Sunday, continuing into early next week as the storm moves north.

Hilary will be the first tropical storm to hit Southern California in 84 years, since “El Cordonazo” in 1939, before the contemporary naming conventions of storms began. The last hurricane to make landfall in Southern California arrived in 1858.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.