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Second "1,000-Year" Flood in Two Years Slams Into Historic Maryland City

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday May 29 2018, @06:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the flood-insurance-FTW dept.

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Common Dreams reports

A Maryland city was devastated [May 27] after 6-inches of heavy rain caused a downtown flash flood. Major damage is reported and many cars have been swept away.

Ellicott City was still recovering from a flash flood two years ago that killed two and forced the historic city to rebuild much of its Main Street. Residents said Sunday's flood seemed even worse than the storm in July 2016--which was called an extremely rare "one-in-1,000 year event", and cost the city tens of millions of dollars in damages.

Additional information at:
The Baltimore Sun
The Washington Post
USAToday

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Tuesday May 29 2018, @03:26PM (6 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 29 2018, @03:26PM (#685657) Journal

    so maybe, just maybe, there's actually some sense into it?

    Are you going to continue to try to snow us with mathematical non sequiturs or are you going to admit that these estimates can sometimes be in error?

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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday May 29 2018, @03:36PM (3 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 29 2018, @03:36PM (#685661) Journal

    My post @Tuesday May 29, @08:01AM
    Yours @Tuesday May 29, @03:26PM

    Are you going to continue...

    This thread is done, happy now?

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

    • (Score: 0, Redundant) by khallow on Tuesday May 29 2018, @03:55PM (2 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 29 2018, @03:55PM (#685682) Journal
      That depends. Do you understand the gist of my posts? The mathematics of the frequency of 1 in N events doesn't inform you of the size of the 1 in N event. Plus, we have here a confounding factor of the urbanization of the region and the building of large parts of the town on a flood plain.

      I think there's an alternate scenario here. The 1 in 1000 estimate was bullshit, provided as political cover for the leaders of the town in question (and perhaps a number of state-level officials as well). Having this extreme event happen again so soon (and being able to easily visualize much worse flooding events like stalled hurricanes that are likely to happen inside of a thousand years), indicates to me that the original statement was likely in error - and probably deliberately so.

      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday May 29 2018, @04:21PM (1 child)

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 29 2018, @04:21PM (#685698) Journal

        someone found some details [soylentnews.org], you may want to check.

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 30 2018, @01:18AM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 30 2018, @01:18AM (#686026) Journal
          Ok, I checked. First, it's not based on actual measurements as suspected. Second, it's on a fine enough scale that there's potential for a lot of 1 in 1000 events, even if their estimates were accurate. Just look at the map and the graph of rainfall. They have potential for several dozen 1 in 1000 events just on that map based on location and time span. They'll have a significant degree of dependence with neighboring regions, but it's not a stretch to generate many mostly independent possibilities from such a scale plus, a region the size of Maryland (not to mention the entire East Coast). For example, get 100 mostly independent observations and you have a 1 in 10 chance of a 1 in 1000 event every year.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by aristarchus on Tuesday May 29 2018, @09:38PM (1 child)

    by aristarchus (2645) on Tuesday May 29 2018, @09:38PM (#685919) Journal

    It's statistics, khallow! Are you innumerate?

    continue to try to snow us with mathematical non sequiturs

    This is NOT about Anthropogenic Global Warming! Just because it was snowing in Maryland in May does not mean that the overall average global temperatures are not rising? And just because you have two once-in-a-thousand-year floods back to back does not mean that they were not both once-in-a-thousand-year events. Please, khallow, argue in good faith, and do not go to the dark side of Runaway.