1000 Year Rainfall Claims Are Poppycock
October 20, 2024
By Paul Homewood
This is not just BS, but fraudulent BS!
Officials called Hurricane Helene’s deadly rainfall and floods “biblical” and “generational.” But weather forecasters used another term: “once in 1,000 years.”
Helene was actually the second once-in-a-millennium storm to strike North Carolina in a matter of days. Less than two weeks before Helene made landfall, an unnamed tropical storm brought 1,000-year rains to communities on the opposite side of the state, inundating homes along the coast.
The idea of two such rainfall events occurring back-to-back might seem confusing. After all, it sounds like they should only occur every 1,000 years. But in reality, it’s all about probability. Understanding the odds — and how climate change is shifting them — is more important than ever for communities and infrastructure managers.
Researchers were able to definitively identify these two extremely rare deluges in North Carolina based on rainfall frequency estimates. Using years of precipitation measurements for a specific place, scientists extrapolate what constitutes a hundred-year storm, for example, for that location.
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