By now, we've seen some of the terrifying images of flooding in areas like Southport and Carolina Beach from Monday's no-named storm.
The National Weather Service in Wilmington, at one point Monday, said that a station in Carolina Beach picked up more than 18 inches of rain.
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Carolina Beach's "1,000-year flood"
They deemed it a "1,000-year flood" based on recurrence intervals.
Though it may seem like, "This flood won't happen again for another 1,000 years," that isn't exactly what the phrase means.
A 1,000-year flood means that something like this, statistically speaking, has a 1-in-1,000 chance (or a 0.10% chance) of happening within a year.
In other words, what happened Monday was extremely rare.
Research from Climate Central shows how a warming atmosphere plays a role on heavy rain events.
Now, I'm not blaming what happened in Carolina Beach solely on a warming climate.
This obviously had a lot to do with Potential Tropical Cyclone 8 and a very narrow band of intense moisture that moved over the same areas.
That said, a warming atmosphere holds more moisture. For every 1°F that the temperature rises, that's 4% more water vapor that the atmosphere holds.
This, in theory, would lead to more frequent episodes of heavy rain and flooding.
A rain record in Raleigh is being challenged
Farther inland, Raleigh picked up more than an inch of rain - a light drizzle compared to the historic deluge seen in New Brunswick County.
Monday was the 16th day of 2024 in which the Triangle saw an inch of rain. That's tied for the second-most on record in a year.
It's an occurrence that's becoming more common in the Triangle. Over the years, we've seen how the average number of 1" rain days has increased. It's not a huge jump, but we're nudging in that upward direction.
