News Wrap: California, Mexico feel effects of Hurricane Hilary

John Yang:

Good evening. I'm John Yang. Tonight, southern California and Mexico's Baja Peninsula are already feeling the effects of Hurricane Hilary hours before it makes landfall. In the desert east of Los Angeles, what's expected to be three days of rain has begun.

Forecasters say a year's rain could fall in a matter of hours leading to catastrophic and life threatening flash floods.

Hurricane Hilary, now a category two storm, is expected to become a tropical storm by the time it makes landfall as early as tonight in a sparsely populated area of the Baja Peninsula. Then, forecasters say it will surge north as the first tropical storm to hit southern California in 84 years.

High winds and heavy rains are expected from the Pacific Coast to southern Nevada and central Arizona. Residents are preparing.

In Newport Beach, they stocked up on sandbags. And San Clemente, workers put down tarps to try to prevent mudslides.

More natural disasters, wildfires are affecting the United States and Canada. In Maui, the death toll from the deadliest wildfire in modern U.S. history now stands at 114. More than 900 are reported missing.

In Canada, Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories is a virtual ghost town after its 20,000 residents were ordered to leave as a large and out of control wildfire threatens the city. And British Columbia is under a state of emergency. With several fires out of control, 15,000 people evacuated and 20,000 more under evacuation alerts.

And a Russian missile strike in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv today killed at least seven people and injured more than 100 others, 12 of them children. Officials say a theater and a university were hit. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned the attack while visiting Sweden. Zelenskyy is asking for fighter jets from Sweden which is in the process of joining NATO.

Still to come on PBS News Weekend, what a new Montana law means for transgender children and their families and the effect of the writers' strike on the production of reality and unscripted TV shows.