On Sunday August 18, 2024, a slow moving front accompanied by training storms brought extreme amounts of rain to parts of the Northeast which led to catastrophic flooding.
On Sunday August 18, 2024, a slow moving front accompanied by training storms brought extreme amounts of rain to parts of the Northeast which led to catastrophic flooding. The worst of the flooding occurred in southwestern Connecticut and Long Island, New York, where more than 10 inches of rain fell in a 24-hour period. The National Weather Service issued flash flood emergencies, which are warnings reserved for exceedingly rare situations in which extreme rainfall is leading to a severe threat to life and catastrophic damage. During the extreme rainfall event, mudslides washed out roads, streets were inundated with flood waters, and swift-water rescues were necessary.
The highest 24-hour rainfall totals were 14.83 inches and 13.5 inches near Oxford, Connecticut. Both values are under further quality control review by a State Climate Extremes Committee to determine if either location officially broke the 24-hour state rainfall record for Connecticut. The previous record was 12.77 inches set on August 19, 1955, from Hurricane Diane. If the high-end total is confirmed, it would qualify as a 1-in-1,000-year extreme rainfall event, based on NOAA’s point precipitation frequency estimates. A 1-in-1,000-year event does not mean that these events can only happen once every 1,000 years, but that over long periods of time, the average return frequency would be every 1,000 years. It also means that statistically speaking, there is only a 0.1 percent chance of a rainfall event of this magnitude occuring at this location in any given year. Sandy Hook, Connecticut, just west of Oxford, picked up just over a foot of rain qualifying as a 1-in-500-year event.
Read more at: NOAA
Photo Credit: Kyraxys via Pixabay
