A CLIMATOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF FLOOD EVENTS IN GEORGIA

Abstract. Almost every year, flooding impacts Georgia. In April of 2000, the Georgia Emergency Management Agency reported that nearly 75 percent of Georgia’s disaster losses since 1990 had been linked to flooding with an estimated 2 billion dollars in total damage. Flooding in Georgia is wide-ranging and impacts areas from the coastal regions to the mountains at various times of the year. In addition, most flooding events can be characterized by the temporal and spatial distribution of precipitation events. The climatology of flooding in Georgia was studied in an attempt to gain a better understanding of the spatial and temporal distribution of flooding events. Utilizing the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) monthly publication entitled Storm Data, flooding events across Georgia from 1987 to 2003 were organized into three categories. These categories were “Small-scale Flooding”, which included isolated short duration flood events generally associated with mesoscale weather, “Large-scale Flooding”, which included long duration widespread flood events generally associated with synoptic rainfall events, and “Tropical Flooding”, which were associated with inland tropical systems