Quote:
Originally Posted by kay
"not very accurate" is not the same as "not possible", which was the bit I was challenging.
And working out the possible size of an extreme rainfall event isn't quite as complex as working out the amount of rainfall on a particular day. You don't need to model what's actually happening to cause the weather, you simply need a distribution that fits the observed frequencies of amounts of rainfall over as long a period as you have data for.
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Unfortunately we only have good data for just over 100 years which is unlikely to have the matchable data sequence required, so far all we have are the records of the last(?) part of a warming period coming out of a little ice-age, I suspect that after another say 1000 years we might find that there is indeed some previous matching data that we could match up.
In the mean time it should be quite possible to calculate what size drains would be needed to cope with a downpour of the highest amount ever likely to fall over say a one hour period, and this be insisted upon as part of the planning consent for every new housing estate. It would certainly help to stop some of these flash floods that happen.