Trends in Heavy Precipitation in the Southern United States

The study examined changes in the frequency of one-day heavy precipitation events over the past 100 years. Annual precipitation climatology was used to define ‘heavy’ daily precipitation, with a range of 1.5 inches per day in western Texas to 2.5 inches per day in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee. The greatest signal for increasing daily events was across Texas and Oklahoma and near the Gulf Coast. A majority of high magnitude daily precipitation events occurred in the latter three decades of the time series.