92nd American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting (January 22-26, 2012)

Thursday, 26 January 2012
Middle Atlantic River Forecast Center Flood Climatology Analysis
Hall E (New Orleans Convention Center )
Charles Chillag, NOAA/NWS/Middle Atlantic River Forecast Center, State College PA, State College, PA; and A. MacFarlane
Manuscript (566.4 kB)

Poster PDF (1.1 MB)

The Middle Atlantic River Forecast Center (MARFC) has compiled a comprehensive list of flood events from 1687 to the 2011. During this time, more than 7800 floods have occurred at MARFC's 171 current forecast points. Extensive flood event and weather information was gathered from NWS hydrologic reports, USGS, websites, books, newspaper clippings, analysis of historical weather maps and county managers. Several statistics have been derived from the flood data including flood frequency, probability of flood stage exceedence and percentage of flood occurrence by month. Results of these statistical analyses, flood event rankings for each forecast location, and examples of how users utilize the data will be presented. All of the flood and statistical information is available on MARFC's flood climatology website (http://www.erh.noaa.gov/marfc/Rivers/FloodClimo/) or by request in an Access database.

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