On Monday, we briefly discussed the flooding event that was going on during class and I said that is was a pretty big event. For this homework assignment, we are going figure out just how big it was by calculating the recurrence interval of the event. During news reports about floods, you will often hear of a flood being described as a 10-year flood or a 100-year flood. The time period being mentioned in these news reports (10 years, et cetera) is the recurrence interval of the flood being covered. The recurrence interval of a flood is the calculated probability that a flood of a given magnitude will occur at a certain interval. It is an estimate of the average time between past occurrences of random events; so, a 100-year flood (an event with a recurrence interval of 100 years) should occur on an average of once every 100 years.
The equation for calculating recurrence interval (R) is:
You will calculate the R for the flooding event that occurred on Monday using the dataset available at the USGS website and the spreadsheet and graphing program excel. If you are not particularly “computer savvy,” do not worry, I have provided detailed instructions and you are
always welcome to ask me questions.
The assignment has been posted on Sakai (on the tests and quizzes page) and will be
due before class on
Monday, February 1st.
You will calculate the R for the flooding event that occurred on Monday using the dataset available at the USGS website and the spreadsheet and graphing program excel. If you are not particularly “computer savvy,” do not worry, I have provided detailed instructions and you are always welcome to ask me questions. 
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