Hurricane Milton dumped so much rain over parts of Florida’s Tampa Bay area that it qualified as a 1-in-1,000-year rainfall event.

St. Petersburg had 18.31 inches of rain — or more than 1.5 feet — in the 24-hour period during which the storm made landfall, according to precipitation data from the National Weather Service.

That included a staggering 5.09 inches in one hour, from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. ET — a level considered to have roughly a 0.1% chance of happening in any given year.

  • @[email protected]
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    fedilink
    3217 hours ago

    I see we’ve graduated from once-in-a-lifetime events to 1 in every 1000 years events. Congrats everyone!

    • @andrewta
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      2417 hours ago

      The next storm of this magnitude should be in two years.

      • @Crackhappy
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        1015 hours ago

        That’s overly optimistic.