Harvey is a 1000-year flood event unprecedented in scale

Washington: As Harvey's rains unfolded, the intensity and scope of the disaster were so enormous that weather forecasters, first responders, the victims, everyone really, couldn't believe their eyes. Now the data are bearing out what everyone suspected: This flood event is on an entirely different scale than what we've seen before in the United States.

Beaumont firefighters rescue two horses
stranded in floodwaters from Hurricane
Harvey in Beaumont, Texas, onThursday.

A new analysis from the University of Wisconsin's Space Science and Engineering Centre has determined that Harvey is a 1-in-1000-year flood event that has overwhelmed an enormous section of Southeast Texas equivalent in size to New Jersey.

There is nothing in the historical record that rivals this, according to Shane Hubbard, the Wisconsin researcher who made and mapped this calculation.

"In looking at many of these events [in the United States], I've never seen anything of this magnitude or size," he said. "This is something that hasn't happened in our modern era of observations.”

Read Jason Samenow’s story in today’s  Melbourne Age - “Harvey is a 1000-year flood event unprecedented in scale.”