Thunderstorms frequently produce brief flooding or minor damage, though far fewer lead to major flooding and widespread or significant damage. Outbreaks of such storms exact large tolls on their victims and can compromise, or completely overwhelm, the emergency response infrastructure. This paper derives empirical frequencies and recurrence intervals of ''high end'' convective weather events in the Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, metropolitan area from archived tornado, hail, damaging-wind, and high-density daily rainfall data, as well as historical records and accounts. Two classes of high-impact events are analyzed: those with the potential to produce widespread damage or disruption and those virtually certain to do so. Storms in this first class recur within the area, on average, 3 times per year, while the more extreme storms recur every 2-2.5 yr on average. Owing to well-established spatial and temporal inhomogeneities in observed severe weather data, true recurrence intervals are probably somewhat shorter. In the context of ongoing regional population growth, the area is becoming increasingly vulnerable to major damage and potential casualties from these major storm events.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.