Detroit Floods Not Caused By Global Warming
By Paul Homewood
As WUWT reports, Detroit’s officials are trying to blame this week’s floods on global warming, to detract attention away from their failure to maintain the sewage system properly.
However, Craig Covey, spokesman for Oakland County Water Resources Commissioner Jim Nash, has blamed global warming for the floods.
According to Covey;
“The system worked exactly like it was supposed to, but we’re seeing these rain events that used to be unusual but just aren’t anymore,” Covey said. “This is going to become more normal and we need to understand that ‘100-year storm’ is an outdated term.”
Covey blamed climate change, and said federal and local governments need to make major investments in infrastructure because “this is exactly what Southeast Michigan’s weather is going to be like in the future.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/13/global-warming-the-incompetent-politicians-excuse/
Confusingly, the Washington Post refers to:
Over four inches of rain fell, breaking the rainfall record for the day and making Monday the second wettest day in Detroit history.
The rain started on Monday morning, when moderately heavy downpours pushed in from the south. After that first wave of rain moved north out of the area, a new batch of stronger storms inundated the already soaked metro. 4.57 inches of rain fell at the Detroit airport, and reports of over four inches of rain were widespread across the metro
What does the historical perspective tell us?
The nearest USHCN station to Detroit is the Mt Clemens USAF base, 17 miles away, and below is the USHCN whisker plot of daily rainfall.
The wettest day recorded was 26th June 1968, when 4.78” fell, so this week’s total seems to have been the second highest. Even though there is a period of some missing data between 2000 and 2009, high rainfall days do not appear to be getting more common, or intense.
We can see this better at the next nearest USHCN site, with nearly complete records, Adrian, which is 62 miles away.
Finally, before poor old global warming gets the blame, we might consider that the daytime temperature reached just 73F on Monday, 9F below normal. And that July temperatures ranked as the 8th coldest on record in Detroit, while so far in August they are still running about 2F below normal.
But don’t expect to hear any of this from the usual outlets.
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/climate/getclimate.php?wfo=dtx
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/climate/getclimate.php?wfo=dtx
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
The classic example of selection bias must be the picking of places with short bursts of heavy rain. A random distribution of such events will often result in the latest maximum being the highest ever recorded AT THAT PARTICULAR PLACE, but not when looking at all places.
Thanks Paul
Nice report , good, simple, complete, and logical analysis.
Must be simple even I understood it.
Lotsa rain happens: