LibertyBell

Yep October 2005 events were stretched out over a few weeks. We almost beat the September 1882 monthly record (did on LI where up to 2 feet of rainfall happened), the monthly record was eventually set in August 2011....don't forget about the big rainfall event that month prior to Irene. That maxed out here (10" in 12 hours), also I don't know how your area did in August 2014 when Islip got the state record with 14" in less than 3 hours.

April 2007 was ranked second in NYC behind Sept 1882. We never seem to be able to top that 24 hr record from Sept 1882 no matter how frequent these extreme events seem to be getting. Oh well, maybe next time?

Yes it makes it much more efficient to communicate to the public with. Keep both and use them both differently. Nothing wrong with describing a historic event like this in a multitude of ways.

The question is are they happening more frequently now? Well, to answer that in a different way, our average precip seems to be going way up if you compare 30 year precip norms now vs let's say a few decades ago. I hate it. There is nothing I dislike more than sticky, muggy tropical humid weather lol.

Yes, we've had three of these so far this season already. All rain events. Had 2 last year. But one of those more of a wind event than a rain event (Isaias). Depends on what side of the storm you're on. Isaias last year had a very Sandy-like feel (in terms of wind, not surge of course) and was relatively dry here on the eastern side. Did see reports of tornadoes on the Jersey shore. Nothing like the two EF3 we have had this summer though.

I have a prime example of another event like that which was about 80 miles further east.....I don't know if you can obtain the precip maps to this one but if you can, look up the Islip deluge from August 2014. Very comparable in terms of max rainfall but it was shifted 80 miles to the east. Close to 14 inches of rain in 3 hours. The standing state record. There's also the August 2011 extreme rainfall event (pre Irene), that was centered 25 miles east of the city (in my area), 10 inches of rain in less than 6 hours.

None lol. I'm saying we need to develop one like this, it would be similar to the Modified Mercalli scale for earthquakes (vs the Richter scale.) The relative classes would signify how extreme (and rare) something is vs the worst that could happen (reasonably) and has to also take into account the physical size of the area impacted.

If you had to bet, have we seen the last of the 90s? For NYC and JFK at least?

Historically speaking dont we often see the end to extreme hot and humid regimes with explosive historic storms like what we just had? Floyd 1999 comes to mind

There's also people who probably dont even have access to communications devices, I suspect. The most vulnerable. I don't know how you reach them.

1/500 year I think. I dont think that really matters since we seem to get at least 2 of these every year. This was our second or third.

14 inches of rain? I think they would This set records.....

Ida for our area one could argue was a Class IV Flood Event. Sandy would be a Class III Wind Event and a Class V Surge Event. We need to switch to impact based scales.....

The scientific community knows, actually everyone knows. It's just a matter of getting companies worried about their own profits out of the way. I say let's threaten their existence the way they threaten ours. Pull no punches.....

They are talking about changing the terminology now, like "remnant"- it doesn't do an event like this justice. We're slowly going to start moving away from the Saffir Simpson scale and more towards an impact based scale, which is something I've wanted for years This would be a Class IV flood event. (Or something thereabouts.) Class V would be if the entire area got 10"+

Could've left the camera set up on a tripod. That's what I would've done.

I'm also wondering about that article you posted about the first rainfall at Summit Camp on top of the Greenland Ice Cap. What implications would higher humidity and even more rainfall have on arctic ice? Because we damn well are seeing higher dew points and higher rainfall here consistently now, so I wonder if this would increase melt rates if the same thing was happening in the polar regions (clearly it's happening since Summit Camp is well within the Arctic Circle.)

Yes this is exactly why we should have been slowly weaning off of it beginning in the 1980s..... But they didn't listen. It's like accelerating a space craft to a distant destination (possibly another star system.) You can only spend half the distance accelerating, because you need to spend an equal amount of time decelerating.

Just in terms of flooding, one would think how wet and saturated the ground is beforehand and how high the river levels were before the event would tell us what kind of an event we need for major flooding. But for top end extreme events like this one and Floyd it probably wouldn't matter they would be devastating either way.

The last time I heard about people abandoning cars like this was Boxing Day 2010.

Difference with Floyd was that came at the tail end of a major drought and super hot summer in 1999. This is the third major event of the summer. Although the damage with Floyd was horrible too, I remember seeing water rescues for people who had to climb up to their roofs to get away from the rising waters.

Was that the one that caused the first EF3 of the summer? It ripped up a Home Depot and mall.

I think this would be the second EF3 of the summer (the first one was also in the Philly area.)

Here's what confuses me.....the differences between the old Fujita and scale and the new "enhanced" Fujita scale. And from the mets I have talked to they either don't understand my question or don't understand why it was done this way either. Here's the basic question.... Instead of making an entirely new scale, why didn't they just adjust the mph ranges of the original scale? Why have old tornadoes on an outdated scale and new tornadoes on a different scale? If the original scale was modified with the new ranges wouldn't it be much better namely have all tornadoes, new and old, on the same scale?

Have there been F4 in CT and MA? I wonder how they occurred so far north?