The new tool, Atlas 15, uses modernized rainfall data to allow engineers to design and build infrastructure to withstand flooding for decades to come as extreme rainfall predictably worsens.
Without it, the engineers and planners say, they would be forced to rely on old data that understate flood risks and put infrastructure in harm’s way.
They are calling on federal officials to save Atlas 15, as heated debate on the federal budget continues.
Chad Berginnis, who directs the national Association of State Floodplain Managers, said there is an urgent need for authoritative data reflecting how weather patterns have dramatically changed over several decades and as recently as last year.
“If I could have it today, I’d have it today. It’s that urgent,” said Berginnis, a certified floodplain manager bas ed in Madison, Wisconsin. “In a large part of the country, infrastructure today is undersized … and it’s because of how old that…data is.”
Planners and engineers in Florida are eager to see Atlas 15 completed and released on schedule this fall.
“It needs to happen,” said Brad Hubbard, a civil engineer and certified floodplain manager who is founder and president of National Flood Experts in Tampa. “I’m excited about new data coming in. It’s overdue. I’ve designed a lot of sites from a civil engineering perspective, and new, better rainfall data will decrease the likelihood of flood, especially urban flooding.”
Hubbard says his office building just west of Tampa International Airport floods frequently now when it did not in the past. And it’s not because of hurricane-driven storm surge.
“My office here in Tampa, it floods every time it rains hard,” Hubbard said. “It wasn’t designed to take 4 inches of rain in one hour, so when that happens, we get water in our building.”
Damage was unprecedented
Having survived three major hurricanes last year that are not reflected in NOAA’s current vault of rainfall data in Atlas 14, Pinellas County Floodplain Coordinator Lisa Foster said local governments need better information to work with. Foster also is a co-chair of the Association of State Floodplain Managers’ insurance committee and its risk-rating 2.0 working group. “Data is something that needs to be updated continuously. … We absolutely need it,” Foster said. “Local governments can’t do this level of modeling.”
Just last year, she explained, Hurricane Debby (in August) was a compound flooding event with heavy rainfall and minor storm surge; Helene (September) was all storm surge, at 7 feet, flooding nearly 30,000 structures; and Milton (October) brought torrential inland rain that flooded another 12,000. The damage was unprecedented. Foster took note, of course, but none of that rainfall data is captured in Atlas 14 for future use, though it would be incorporated into Atlas 15.
As in Pinellas County and other Florida counties, Jacksonville is actively investing in infrastructure to provide flood resiliency and knows it could design those projects better with the next-gen rainfall models emerging in Atlas 15. Jacksonville has 1,500 linear miles of shoreline, one of the longest shorelines in the nation, including miles of dense development on its beaches and along the St. Johns River. The river runs right through the city, gathering not only local rainfall but also runoff from upstream.
Jacksonville Chief Resilience Officer Ann Coglianese is eager to replace old data in Atlas 14 with the updated and predictive data in Atlas 15.
“One of the things, when I’ve been talking with folks about Atlas 15 is really drawing on the reference to Hurricane Helene in North Carolina. That was a major rain event that had catastrophic impacts. Whatever data set we’re using nationally to talk about rainfall intensity, duration and frequency should have that storm as one of the inputs, one of the things that has been studied, to arrive at … final guidance that communities get on how to prepare for rain,” Coglianese said.
She said release of the modernized data would protect people, property and dollars.
“There’s a whole host of projects in our capital improvement plan that address flood resilience. Part of our responsibility as local government officials is to make smart financial decisions for our taxpayers … to determine what is at risk and make sure we’re putting the right interventions in place,” Coglianese said. She cited two major projects among them.
“Like many communities, we’re doing a major pump station project, on LaSalle Street in the neighborhood of San Marco which has chronic flood challenges. We’re doing a major restoration along McCoys Creek which means to work with that creek system to create more floodplain and spaces for that water to go at peak stages. … Both of those really rely on data in how they’re designed.”
Status unknown
Atlas 15 — the 15th edition of the nation’s precipitation-frequency atlas — is two years into development at NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and was scheduled to debut this fall. NOAA had requested congressional funding to modernize the atlas, which finally occurred in 2021 with passage of the Biden-era Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, aka the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.The new atlas would ditch decades-old rainfall data found in Atlas 14 and instead would forecast flooding in two parts: Volume 1, recent rainfall observations that account for altered weather patterns so far, and Volume 2, increasingly severe rainfall expected in years ahead, based on intensifying changes in the climate. In other words, Atlas 14 is about rainfall past, Atlas 15 Vol. 1 is about rainfall present, and Atlas 15 Vol. 2 is about rainfall future – vital information when building a home or a bridge intended to serve for decades.
Atlas 14 drew a harsh critique in 2023 from First Street Foundation, a nonprofit research group that connects climate risk to financial risk. First Street analysts warned that infrastructure designed under Atlas 14 rainfall data is out of date. For example, it said: “In the worst cases, what is currently estimated to be an infrequent and severe 1-in-100 year flood event is actually a much more frequent 1-in-8 year event.”
Despite enthusiasm around Atlas 15, the work has gone quiet, employees have resigned, and concerns are mounting that all or part of the project may be shelved due to budget cuts at NOAA and anti-climate-science sentiment. (President Trump called climate change “a hoax” in 2022. Project 2025, produced by the conservative Heritage Foundation to influence federal policy, says climate-change research should be halted and calls NOAA a driver of an alleged “climate change alarm industry.” In Florida, references to climate change were removed from state records last year by order of HB 1654, and in 2021, Gov. Ron DeSantis called climate concerns “left-wing stuff.”)
The only member of the Atlas 15 team to provide comments was lead scientist Ken Kunkel, a principal research scholar at North Carolina State University’s Institute for Climate Studies. He has studied heavy precipitation for more than 30 years and hopes that completion of Atlas 15, volumes 1 and 2 will be the capstone of his career. He declined to comment on the operational status of the project and demurred to officials at NOAA.
The vital difference between Atlas 14 and Atlas 15, Kunkel said, is that the old model was based on the science of a “stationary climate” that no longer exists, while the new model accounts for scientific evidence of a changing climate that will continue to change.
“The planet has warmed. The basic physics we’re talking about are solid and simple. A lot of places are changing and we have to recognize that,” Kunkel said.
Repeated questions from the Florida Trident about the status of Atlas 15 were not answered by NOAA’s National Weather Service; by the Office of Water Prediction, tasked with leading the project; nor by two contractors hired to work on it.
Bipartisan, interstate support
As in Florida, floodplain managers in other states want to save Atlas 15.In Virginia, with major cities on coastlines, bays and rivers, planners call the long-awaited update “critical,” “vital” and “essential” to help them build infrastructure that is not doomed to fail due to extreme rainfall and worsening flooding.
The Hampton Roads commission voted unanimously to write to the U.S. Department of Commerce, of which NOAA is a branch, to the acting director of NOAA and to its congressional delegation calling for the timely completion of Atlas 15.
Two weeks later, the Northern Virginia Regional Commission, representing 13 local governments including Alexandria and Fairfax, also wrote to those authorities saying, “Our region faces increasing challenges related to climate change” and that any stoppage in development of Atlas 15 is “deeply concerning.”
“We urge the Department of Commerce to complete and release this critical scientific resource as originally planned. … Pausing work on Volume 2 jeopardizes the ability of local governments, utilities, engineers, and planners to prepare effectively for projected increases in rainfall and the intensifying impacts of storm events,” the letter says, in part.
U.S. Sens. Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, sponsored the FLOODS (Flood Level Observation, Operations, and Decision Support) legislation and funding that created Atlas 15. It was cosponsored by Democrats Cory Booker of New Jersey and Gary Peters of Michigan and a second Republican, Joni Ernst of Iowa. When he announced the legislation in 2021, Wicker called for advancements in federal science to help reduce casualties and damages caused by flooding, not only on coastlines but wherever water rises.
“Flooding is a common and deadly natural disaster in the U.S., resulting in over $25 billion in annual economic losses. … Events in my home state of Mississippi, such as the prolonged opening of the Bonnet Carré spillway and the Pearl River and Yazoo backwater floods, underscore the importance of an effective understanding and response to high water. This legislation would protect lives and property by directing NOAA to improve its flood monitoring, forecasting, and communication efforts.”
‘Bad deal’ for taxpayers
Meanwhile, a Federal Flood Risk Management Standard that formerly required federally funded infrastructure and housing to account for extreme rainfall expected in the near future was revoked on the first day of Trump’s second term.The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced the standard’s removal from its policies in March, writing: “Stopping implementation will reduce the total timeline to rebuild in disaster-impacted communities and eliminate additional costs previously required to adhere to these strict requirements.”
“It’s dead under this administration,” said Berginnis, the floodplain manager. “It’s a bad deal for the U.S. taxpayers not to build this stuff to a more flood-resilient standard. Because it just simply means it will get damaged again and rebuilt again and damaged again.”
State and local governments may choose to adopt flood risk-management standards for themselves, as detailed by the American Society of Civil Engineers in its version, a new “Flood Resilience Standard” known as ASCE 24-24. Berginnis said the Association of State Floodplain Managers heartily endorses the voluntary standard, which provides guidance on how to build for resilience in areas where extreme rainfall is expected to become normal in the near future.
In Tampa, Hubbard endorses the new standard, saying it is wise to invest whenever you can in greater resilience than to build to minimum standards based on yesteryear conditions.
“I’m a conservative person by nature, and I would rather spend an extra couple of dollars and know that I’m safe, rather than sweating it out every time something’s in the Gulf,” he said.
Berginnis said his organization urges “all communities to adopt it.”
Laura Cassels is a veteran Florida journalist and former Capitol Bureau chief who specializes in science, the environment, and the economy.
This article first appeared on Florida Trident and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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This article appears in Jun 12-18, 2025.