Hurricane Rosa could pose a flooding threat to desert southwest and parts of the Rocky Mountains in the middle of next week as the storm makes a sharp turn toward northwestern Mexico. Forecasters are only expecting a couple of inches of rain—nothing like we've seen from recent storms out East—but the impermeable ground in the Southwest makes even a short burst of heavy rain a dangerous prospect for people in vulnerable areas.

The eastern Pacific hurricane season is churning out storms in abundance this year. Rosa is the tenth hurricane to form in this part of the world this season, and it's the first storm to significantly threaten the Mexican coast. Rosa grew into a major hurricane on Thursday afternoon, taking advantage of warm water, moist air, and low wind shear in the environment around it.

Weather models have been strikingly consistent, with the trough picking up the hurricane and moving it toward Mexico and the United States. An upper-level trough in the jet stream will dip over the West Coast this weekend, picking up Hurricane Rosa and forcing it to make a sharp northerly turn toward the Baja Peninsula. The storm will accelerate after it turns north; current forecasts show it making landfall on Tuesday, reaching the United States by the middle of the week. However, the timing is less certain than the track.