Severe flash flooding in parts of Connecticut has left at least one person dead as some parts of the state experienced what has been called a “1,000-year” rain event, according to meteorologists on Sunday.
The National Weather Service (NWS) reported a flash flooding emergency warning was issued for parts of Fairfield, New Haven, Litchfield and Hartford counties on Sunday as heavy rain continued to fall over the same areas of western and southern Connecticut for hours.
In addition, data from the NWS late Sunday showed nearly 10 inches of rain hitting some parts of the state, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
The relentless downpour left communities grappling with the aftermath, and the floods claimed the life of one person.
According to the New Haven Register on Monday, Fire Chief Scott Pelletier of Oxford, Connecticut, confirmed the recovery of a woman’s body, who was swept away during Sunday’s storm. Authorities are still on the lookout for a second woman who was carried off by floodwaters during a rescue attempt.
Newsweek reached out to Connecticut Emergency Management Services via email on Monday for comment.
Meanwhile, rescue operations continued into Monday as more than a dozen people were rescued from a restaurant in Oxford by firefighters using an aerial ladder, the AP reported.
The severe weather comes as meteorologists said that rainfall in some towns would count as a 1,000-year rain event.
According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the term 1,000-year flood “means that, statistically speaking, a flood of that magnitude (or greater) has a 1 in 1,000 chance of occurring in any given year. In terms of probability, the 1,000-year flood has a 0.1 percent chance of happening in any given year.”
According to meteorologist Jacob Feuerstein on X, formerly Twitter, the 1,000- year rain narrowly broached in Shelton, Connecticut.
“1000-year rain threshold narrowly broached in ‘Shelton’ today for six hour rain. The station is actually northeast of Monroe, right near the core of radar-estimated twelve hour rain,” Feuerstein wrote on X.
In addition, meteorologist Craig Ceecee posted that based on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) calculations, a part of western Connecticut experienced 4 to 6 inches of rain in three hours, making it a “once-in-1,000 year” event.
“A swath of western Connecticut, from New Canaan to west of Waterbury, has experienced 4″ to 6″ of rain in 3 hours, including up to 3.5″ in just ONE hour. Based on NOAA calculations, those both make for a once-in-1,000 year (or more extreme) rainfall event,” Ceecee wrote on X.
Previously California was hit by a deadly storm in February that caused a “1,000-year flood,” according to weather experts.
An atmospheric river unleashed extreme rainfall and high winds on the West Coast state during that weather event, knocking out power for hundreds of thousands of homes and killing at least one person. Flooding was widespread with mudslides ripping through multiple areas, forcing emergency services to attend to homes in hillside communities across California.
According to the @US_Stormwatch X account, the February storm in California was a one in 1,000-year rainfall event. The account said it was “a truly unprecedented storm in modern history for the region as an atmospheric river stalls over the region.
