OAK RIDGE, Tenn. — What we've experienced this month feels a little like Deja Vu.
Almost one year ago, we saw a similar round of heavy rainfall and flooding in February of 2019. Which begs the question-will February floods be the new normal in the future?
We took our concerns to the brilliant minds at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
"First of all, Oak Ridge is great and we are doing lots of great things, but if you are asking anyone to tell you precisely what will happen this time next year, no one can do that yet. If we keep researching, maybe one day!" said researcher Shih Chieh Kao.
Dr. Kao says predicting the exact forecast a year out isn't possible right now. However, research can study the chances and frequency of extreme weather events and determine if there is an upward or downward trend.
Science shows the trend is going up based on two different factors, first urbanization.
"When the city grows, you have more population moving, more business and lots of development and lots of road will be built," explained Dr. Kao. "Lots of areas become impervious, you have rainfall coming in that now holds the moisture and forms the flood quickly. The bigger the city grows, the bigger this challenge will grow."
Developers have special guidelines when they build to prepare for precipitation, but some extreme events you cannot protect against.
The second contributing factor is the magnitude of the rainfall.
"The main driver is air temperature warming," explained Dr. Kao "When it warms it has more ability to hold moisture, and that means more fuel to the system. That's why, overall speaking, the system has more tendency to give you an extreme event."
And based on those findings, our area is seeing an increasing trend of rainfall overall, not just in February.
Researchers say as technology improves, so will the ability to learn more specific data that can give more lead way time to get information and predictions out faster.