I think that the 100, or 1000 year events are determined by probability, bell curves, and percentiles. Could be wrong. A hundred year event is something with a 1% probability of happening in that given year. A thousand year event is something with a .1% probability of happening that year. Paired alone, a thousand year event may not be indicative of anything other than luck, but when you have multiple hundred or thousand year events happening in the time span of a few Summers, it should trigger alarm and concern. Multiple 1,000 year floods in Virginia is alarming, and yet I didn’t hear about it at all. I wonder how many people heard about the record flash floods in New York weeks ago. But now we are talking probability and statistics and the general public isn’t moved very much by that.
I was trying to find songs written about flood events like that. I was looking around with the historic Johnstown Floods. Johnstown Pennsylvania had multiple historic floods in the past hundred years. There is chilling photos from those events. Anyone from that area knows those stories. Like of residents boating on floating doors with medical supplies. I know this song by Randy Newman, called Burn on. The song is about the Cuyahoga River catching on fire (which happened in 1969 due to oil spilling on the river). The song has always stuck with me, more than statistics ever will.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDVIFVy1MXQ
“There’s a red moon rising, over the Cuyahoga River, rolling into Cleveland in the lake.. There’s an oil barge winding, down the Cuyahoga River, rolling into Cleveland to the lake.. Cleveland city of light, city of magic, you’re calling me.. Cleveland even now I can’t remember.. cause the Cuyahoga River, goes smoking in my dreams.. Burn on big river, burn on.. Now the lord can make you tumble, the lord can make you turn, the lord can make you overflow….. but the lord can’t make you burn…”
Here’s an article about it from the Smithsonian..
It was the summer of 1969, and recent high school graduate Tim Donovan needed a job to pay his college tuition. When it came to well-paid summer work in Cleveland, there was one good place to look: the steel mills. Donovan went to work as a hatch tender for Jones & Laughlin Steel, standing at the top of machines stationed along the river to help unload ore carriers. It was his first real interaction with the Cuyahoga River, and the experience didn’t endear him to it. “The river was a scary little thing,” Donovan says. “There was a general rule that if you fell in, God forbid, you would go immediately to the hospital.
The water was nearly always covered in oil slicks, and it bubbled like a deadly stew. Sometimes rats floated by, their corpses so bloated they were practically the size of dogs. It was disturbing, but it was also just one of the realities of the city.”
English