Is Korea’s ‘once-in-a-century’ rain now happening every year? Experts say yes

What experts describe as a once-in-100-to-200-year rainfall event has left parts of Korea reeling, with record-breaking precipitation turning the unusual into the new normal. On July 17 alone, the city of Seosan in South Chungcheong Province was hit with 438.9 millimeters of rain, while Gwangju recorded 426.4 millimeters — far exceeding the region’s average rainfall for the entire month of July. In Seosan and the nearby city of Hongseong, around 100 millimeters fell within just one hour during the early morning, shattering the 30-millimeter-per-hour threshold typically used to define a heavy downpour. Experts say climate change is behind the intensifying and increasingly frequent rainstorms affecting the Korean Peninsula, with once-rare extreme weather events now occurring annually in many regions. The latest flooding was caused by a phenomenon known as a "training convective system," in which a narrow band of cumulonimbus clouds forms between two different air masses. This long, thin band hovered over parts of the country, dumping vast amounts of moisture. Southwesterly winds traveWeiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Korea Times Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Korea Times