Hurricane Milton dumped so much rain on parts of Florida’s Tampa Bay area that it qualified as a 1-in-1,000-year rainfall event.

According to precipitation data from the National Weather Service, St. Petersburg received 18.31 inches of rain – or more than 4.5 meters – in the 24-hour period when the storm made landfall.

That included a whopping 5.09 inches in one hour, from 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM ET — a level that is thought to have about a 0.1% chance in any given year.

“THIS IS INSANE! St. Petersburg has reported 5.09 inches of rain in ONE HOUR and 9.04 inches in 3 hours,” Matthew Cappucci, atmospheric scientist and senior meteorologist at MyRadar Weather, wrote Wednesday on X. “That’s rarer than a thousand years of rain.”

Milton made landfall near Siesta Key on Wednesday at 8:30 PM ET as a strong Category 3 storm.

Other significant precipitation totals across Florida include 14.01 inches in Clearwater Beach, 13.09 inches in Baskin, 11.43 inches in Tampa and 10.12 inches in Seminole.

It takes time to understand the influence of climate change on individual weather events, so scientists have not yet been able to complete analyzes of its effect on Milton. But overall, experts know that global warming is making storms wetter and more intense.

Studies have shown that global warming increases sea surface temperatures, which provides additional energy for storms, allowing them to gain speed and intensity. The unusually high sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico that helped strengthen Hurricanes Milton and Helene were 200 to 500 times more likely to be due to climate change, according to research released Wednesday.

A warmer atmosphere can also hold more water: for every degree Fahrenheit the planet warms, the atmosphere can hold about 3% to 4% more moisture. This means that storms can dump enormous amounts of rain over land.

Milton’s driving rains along Florida’s Gulf Coast quickly flooded roads, homes and other structures. The National Weather Service issued a flash flood emergency for Tampa and St. Petersburg that lasted until 2:30 a.m. ET on Thursday.

Forecasters expected heavy rain as Milton barreled into Florida. In the hours before landfall, the National Hurricane Center said it expected 6 to 12 inches of rain in the central and northern parts of the Florida peninsula through Thursday, with local totals up to 18 inches.

Even the east coast of Florida has been ravaged by rain. Preliminary measures on Wednesday indicated 7 inches had fallen in St. Augustine, 7.38 inches in Titusville and 3.05 inches in Daytona Beach, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Hurricane Milton has moved back out to sea, but additional rainfall and flooding is expected to continue in parts of East and Central Florida through Thursday, according to the National Hurricane Center.