An Examination of the Climatology and Environmental Characteristics of

This study used the publication Storm Data to compile a climatology of flash floods reported in the Binghamton, NY (BGM) County Warning Area (CWA) of the National Weather Service (NWS). This work revealed diurnal and seasonal trends in flash flood frequency across the CWA. Also evident was a spatial disparity in the number of flash flood reports in different portions of the CWA. In some cases, adjacent counties with similar topography reported a dissimilar number of flash floods. Because those counties reporting a strikingly smaller number of floods tended to be less populous than the neighboring counties reporting a larger number of events, a reporting bias may be to blame. Possible reporting biases aside, regional differences in the number flash flood reports across the CWA suggest that some areas are more prone to flash flooding than others. The tendencies discovered in the climatology can be applied to the activities of the BGM CWA, both in improving forecasts of flash flooding in flood-prone areas and in collecting data from counties found to possibly be under-reporting events.