A 1 in 1,000 year event does not mean what reporters think it means

A 1 in 1,000 year event does not mean what reporters think it means

WRONG:

So rare was Tuesday’s rain between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. in Sarasota that it should only be expected every 500 to 1,000 years. The Tampa Bay area can normally expect 7.3 inches in the entire month of June.

Southern Florida receives record rainfall and flash flooding in a 500-to-1,000-year event (nbcnews.com)

From the USGS:

A 100-year flood happened last year so it won’t happen for another 99 years, right? Not exactly. Misinterpretation of terminology often leads to confusion about flood recurrence intervals. Read on to learn more.

….

 The term “100-year flood” is used in an attempt to simplify the definition of a flood that statistically has a 1-percent chance of occurring in any given year. Likewise, the term “100-year storm” is used to define a rainfall event that statistically has this same 1-percent chance of occurring. In other words, over the course of 1 million years, these events would be expected to occur 10,000 times. But, just because it rained 10 inches in one day last year doesn’t mean it can’t rain 10 inches in one day again this year.

The 100-Year Flood | U.S. Geological Survey (usgs.gov)

A 1,000 year rain fall event means they have created an estimate that there is a 1 in 1000 chance that such rain will happen every year, and not that such a rain event will happen only once in a thousand years.

The reporter Patrick Smith, of NBC, is based in London, England and studied history in college.

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