Tropical Cyclone Rainfall Records

By Paul Homewood

Meteorologist and hurricane expert, Philip Klotzbach has put together this map for tropical cyclone rainfall records by state:

https://twitter.com/philklotzbach/status/1013803032914505728

It seems a bit of a mixed bag, with little to support claims that TC rainfall is increasing nowadays.

We can home in on the east coast:

The first thing that stands out is just what an impact Floyd had, breaking state records for:

New Hampshire

Vermont

New Jersey

N Carolina

Unlike some others of these record breaking storms, Floyd passed through very quickly rather than stalling.

We have heard a lot about the stalling of Harvey and Florence, but such events are nothing new.

It was exactly what happened with Hurricane Easy in 1950, which swamped Florida. Stalling also caused Alberto to leave Georgia with the worst flooding in history in 1994.

In the same year as Alberto, Tropical Storm Jerry dumped record rainfall on S Carolina.

Biggest of the lot was Camille, one of the strongest storms to hit the US on record. Having made landfall as a Cat 5 in Mississippi, Camille curved inland, before re-emerging at Norfolk, Virginia. Before leaving, it dumped record amounts of rain on Virginia, and is still regarded as one of the worst natural disasters in central Virginia’s recorded history.

Hurricane Camille Track

A look at the chronological distribution of these records shows little evidence of any trends. My guess is that the lack of any record prior to 1950 has more to do with the lack of automatic rain gauges or a widespread network for collecting data at that time than any climatic factors.

When measuring extremes, the more sites you have, the more likely you are to find a “new record”.