the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 23 Apr 2026
Brief communication: Contextualizing the September 2024 extreme precipitation in Austria within the climatological record
Abstract. From 12–16 September 2024, Vb-type cyclone ‘Boris’ brought persistent heavy precipitation and strong winds to Central and Eastern Europe. Northeastern Austria was particularly affected, with several pre-Alpine regions exceeding 300 mm in five days, and numerous station records broken. Using station and gridded observations, we benchmark five-day total precipitation against historical extremes and estimate return periods. We find that 6.6 % of Austria experienced totals at least 50 % above previous records, with maxima around 162 % higher. Several stations exhibit return periods of hundreds of years. The event is unprecedented in the Austrian observational record, underscoring its exceptional severity and climatological rarity.
Competing interests: At least one of the (co-)authors is a member of the editorial board of Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences.
Publisher's note: Copernicus Publications remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims made in the text, published maps, institutional affiliations, or any other geographical representation in this paper. While Copernicus Publications makes every effort to include appropriate place names, the final responsibility lies with the authors. Views expressed in the text are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.- Preprint
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Status: final response (author comments only)
- RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2026-1825', Anonymous Referee #1, 30 Jun 2026
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RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2026-1825', Anonymous Referee #2, 07 Jul 2026
This brief communication revisits the exceptional September 2024 Storm Boris precipitation event, focusing on Austria and providing a statistical characterization of the observed precipitation extremes. The manuscript is generally well written, the methodology is sound and clearly described, and the results are presented in a clear and convincing manner. The study provides a comprehensive assessment of the rarity of the event from an extreme-value perspective.
Nevertheless, I believe the manuscript would benefit from a clearer discussion of its scientific novelty. Several studies have already analysed Storm Boris from different perspectives (event attribution, dynamical mechanisms, hydrological impacts, etc.), many of which are already cited by the authors. Therefore, the manuscript should better articulate what additional scientific insight this contribution provides beyond the existing literature and why this statistical analysis deserves publication as a standalone contribution.
After clarifying the novelty of the study and addressing the comments below, I consider the manuscript suitable for publication in NHESS.
General comments
- Given the strong emphasis on the exceptional nature of this event, I think the manuscript would benefit from including a synoptic figure illustrating the atmospheric configuration responsible for the event. Although the circulation has been described elsewhere, such a figure would considerably improve the physical interpretation of the statistical results and help readers unfamiliar with the event understand why precipitation was so persistent and spatially organized.
- The discussion on the estimated return periods could be strengthened. The authors correctly acknowledge the substantial uncertainty associated with extrapolating return periods far beyond the observational record. However, this issue has received considerable attention in the recent literature, particularly following recent record-breaking climate extremes. I encourage the authors to discuss their findings in the context of these recent studies. For example, see Zeder et al. (2023); https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023GL104090
Minor comment
- L85: please support this statement with an appropriate reference, particularly because no circulation analysis is presented in this study.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2026-1825-RC2
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- 1
The paper presents a statistical characterization of the extreme event happened In Austria in 2024. The applied methodology seems correct and reasonable (I have a few comments on that, listed below), and results moderately interesting. However, my main concern is on the relevance of this work with respect to the NHESS Brief Communication scopes, as reported in the journal page: “These may be used to (a) report new developments, significant advances, and novel aspects of experimental and theoretical methods and techniques which are relevant for scientific investigations within the journal scope; (b) report/discuss significant matters of policy and perspective related to the science of the journal, including "personal" commentary; (c) disseminate information and data on topical events of significant scientific and/or social interest within the scope of the journal.” Maybe the paper could be in the (c) case, but I suggest to the author to more clearly state the relevance of their work, now it seems to me a case study with limited new added knowledge.
Here the list of specific comments.
Line 11: briefly mention what “Vb storm track” is
Line 30-31: which return period? Then at line 149: Different from your estimates?
Line 49: why using the Rx5day2024 and not the event one? I mean, this way you are characterizing the 2024 maxima, not specifically the event, as also mentioned in the first sentence of figure1 caption (for some cell, the 2024 maxima happened during the September event, for others, no)
Line 58: what st indicate in Yst ?
Line 64 and line 98: this result is based on just 4 stations. Why not using all? Is this valid also for the more distant stations such as 6-9-10?
Line 65: bias on what? And how much is that bias?
Line 67: which others non-pooled baseline models? Mention or show their performance
Lines 87-92: I find not coherent numbers and explanations between eq.2, these lines, and figure 1b. For example, when you say “more than double it”, do you mean delta (eq.2)=100%? But deviations in figure 1b >200%? I suggest to use same metric in the text and figure.
Lines 110-125: I think that too many lines are dedicated to the explanation regarding the inclusion of the two stations with very short length. Also … adding them “leaves the shape parameter unchanged” (line115), so how they “help stabilize the join EV distribution” (line 119) ? what if you don’t include them?
Line 133: not clear to me what do you mean with “the most extreme intensities can decouple from the regional mean at the distributional limits due to localized effects and hydrometeorological regimes”. Which localized effects and hydromet. regimes?
Line 134: which kind of consistency you are referring here?
Line 125: stable within 0.15-0.25 … but before you mentioned stability around 0.22 at high percentile.
Figure 2: showing the time series on the left seems a quite basic plots; maybe better to move to supplementary: Caption mention the “overall goodness of fit”: have you assessed it or this is a by-eye evaluation?
Line 156: what do you mean with “accounting for local controls”? and how you demonstrate its importance with your work?