Following peak intensity, further strengthening was inhibited due to the emergence of a high pressure area over the United States Gulf Coast. The presence of this system injected dry air into Hilda, gradually weakening the hurricane. The once prominent eye of the storm clouded over as a result of this advection. During the evening hours of October 3, Hilda made landfall on the central Louisiana coast with a minimum pressure of 950 mbar (hPa; 28.06 inHg) and maximum sustained winds of , making it equivalent to a Category 3 hurricane on the modern-day Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale. Rapid weakening followed landfall as a result of the surrounding cold air; by 0600 UTC on October 4, Hilda had been downgraded to tropical storm intensity. The same area of high pressure which had weakened the tropical cyclone later forced Hilda eastward, resulting in the storm's merging with a cold front and thus transitioning into an extratropical cyclone later that day. These extratropical remnants continued to track eastward before they were last noted near Jacksonville, Florida on October 5.