Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Say Goodbye to the "Hundred Year Storm" Say Hello to the new "Hundred Year Storm"


The "hundred year storm." What a quaint notion, so very Holocene. It's a term used to describe a weather event so severe that it would only happen once a century. Only that was the Holocene, this is the Anthropocene.  Now these really severe storms are more frequent. In fact, severe storm events  now occur with much greater frequency, intensity and duration.  And so the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, NOAA, is expected to reclassify the "100 year storm" designation.

What's interesting about this is that NOAA's approach will be to increase the amount of rainfall and flooding necessary to qualify for a once a century designation. What used to be really, really bad will now become "meh."

1 comment:

Rural said...

Whereas they should be reclassifying them as 50 year storms or perhaps more accuracy, given recent weather events world wide, 5, 10 or 20 year events.......??