Research: Explicit forecasts of recurrence intervals for rainfall: Evaluation and implementation using convection-allowing models

This research is sponsored by NOAA, and builds upon our analysis of extreme rainfall events using historical "return periods" for rainfall amounts. In Stevenson and Schumacher (2014), we developed a database of events in which the rainfall amounts exceeded the "2% annual exceedence probability," more commonly referred to as a "50-year rain event" for various accumulation periods. In this research, we are extending this approach to forecasts of heavy precipitation in convection-allowing numerical models.

Part of this effort includes real-time monitoring of model precipitation forecasts of extreme events, which can be found at: , along with the monitoring of analyzed precipitation events: . Preliminary versions of these sites were evaluated at the 2014 Flash Flood and Intense Rainfall Experiment (FFaIR) at the NOAA Weather Prediction Center.