It’s not very often that 8″+ of rain falls in 3 hours in the Tampa Bay area, but that happened early Tuesday evening in Sarasota. At the very least, that is considered the type of event which should only occur once every 500 to 1,000 years.
As seen from the NOAA graphic (above), the purple bullseye shows the area where the 3-hour rain totals that fell from roughly 5 p.m. – 8 p.m. reached a recurrence interval, or return period, that peaks at the top of the scale: 1-in-200 years.
It was also the all-time record for the most rain in one hour in Sarasota with 3.93″ falling, as seen below.
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Hurricane impacts even with out a hurricane. Climate change in action.
