High rainfall event

[ChrisLeslie]

The town of Mackay on the Queensland coast recently had over 600ml of rain in a 6-hour event. This is more than the total annual rainfall for my home town in one event. Fortunately that town is used to infrequent floods and was not so disasterous. Does anybody know of similar or greater rainfall events occurring recently?

[Astronuc]

Is that 600 ml/sq m?

I've experienced about 0.3 m of rain in 24 hr period, or 0.5 m in 72 hrs, with up to about 5 cm/hr rate. About 18 months ago, we had two events like that, and the second event resulted in significant flooding.

[turbo]

Years ago, I had to fly into western Kentucky to conduct an on-site safety training seminar for operators of chemical recovery boiler operators at a pulp mill. Approaching the airport in Paducah, I could see water practically everywhere. They had gotten 6" (15cm) of rain in less than 24 hours the previous day. Since this region is at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and is quite flat, it is prone to flooding. To protect property from flooding from up-river surges, the rivers are bordered with levees and flood walls. The problem is that these barriers impede the run-off of waters from heavy rains, so the lands "protected" by these barriers remained flooded, and when I took of for St. Louis at the end of the week, the low-lying areas were still covered with standing water.

[Bystander]

http://www.dnr.state.ne.us/floodplain/mitigation/1935flood.html