VOLUME 23 JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY NOVEMBER 2022

Quantifying Flood Frequency Associated with Clustered Mesoscale Convective

Systems in the United States

HUANCUI HU,a ZHE FENG,a AND L. RUBY LEUNGa

a
Atmospheric Sciences and Global Change Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Washington

(Manuscript received 1 March 2022, in final form 1 August 2022)

ABSTRACT: Mesoscale convective systems (MCSs) that are clustered in time and space can have a broader impact on
flooding because they have larger area coverage than that of individual MCSs. The goal of this study is to understand the
flood likelihood associated with MCS clusters. To achieve this, floods in the Storm Events Database in April–August of
2007–17 are matched with clustered MCSs identified from a high-resolution MCS dataset and terrestrial conditions in a
land surface dataset over the central-eastern United States. Our analysis indicates that clustered MCSs preferentially oc-
curring in April–June are more effective at producing floods, which also last longer due to the greater rainfall per area and
wetter initial soil conditions and, hence, produce greater runoff per area than nonclustered MCSs. Similar increases of
flood occurrence with cluster-total rainfall size and wetter soils are also observed for each MCS cluster, especially for the
overlapping rainfall areas within each cluster. These areas receive rainfall from multiple MCSs that progressively wet the
soils and are therefore associated with higher flood likelihood. This study underscores the importance to understand clus-
tered MCSs to better understand flood risks and their future changes.
KEYWORDS: Flood events; Convective storms; Soil moisture

1. Introduction based quantification of floods in association with MCSs has

not been available until a recent work. By combining a newly
Mesoscale convective systems (MCSs) play an important
developed MCS tracking database with a storm event data-
hydrological role in the central United States because they
base, Hu et al. (2021a) found that MCSs account for most of
are responsible for 30%–70% of the warm season rainfall in
the floods during the warm season in the central and eastern
the region and they have been associated with severe floods
United States, particularly for the slow-rising floods and hy-
(Fritsch et al. 1986; Houze et al. 1990; Haberlie and Ashley
brid floods (flood episodes consisting of both flash and slow-
2019). These organized convections are often initiated near
rise flood events).
the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and grow while propa-
Notably, some MCSs can develop closely in time and space
gating eastward to the Great Plains (Laing and Fritsch 1997;
due to favorable environments (e.g., abundant moisture, per-
Houze 2004; Ashley et al. 2003). Most regions in the Great
sistent ascending mechanisms by frontal processes, mesoscale
Plains experience 4–5 MCSs each month in the warm season
vortices, cold pools, and moderate wind shear). One extreme
(Feng et al. 2019). Compared with other non-MCS rainfall
case of clustered MCSs occurred in May 2015, when more
produced by isolated convections and stratiform clouds, MCS
than 20 MCSs swept across the Texas–Oklahoma area (Fig. 1a),
rainfall is ∼7 times more intense (Hu et al. 2020a). Therefore,
producing total rainfall that can “cover the entire state of
MCS storms are one of the key meteorological phenomena
Texas 8 inches deep” (Martinez and Brunfeld 2015). Conse-
that can produce extreme precipitation, particularly in the
quently, this MCS cluster caused ∼45 million U.S. dollars of
central Great Plains (Kunkel et al. 2012; Stevenson and
flood damage in Houston alone (AP 2015) and substantial
Schumacher 2014). Consequently, higher surface runoff is a
losses in life and properties in surrounding areas including
common terrestrial response to the intense MCS rainfall and
Oklahoma and Louisiana due to flash and extensive floods
is intimately linked with flooding (Hu et al. 2020b). Case stud-
and even tornados associated with the clustered MCSs. This
ies of flooding associated with MCSs have been well docu-
case has been linked with the persistent and strengthened El
mented (Maddox et al. 1978; Bosart and Sanders 1981; Houze
Niño sea surface temperature pattern that deepened the sta-
et al. 1990; Schumacher and Johnson 2005, 2008), and flood
tionary trough west of Texas and enhanced the Great Plains
occurrence in the central United States that peaks in the
low-level jet and further attributed to the warming climate
warm season has been attributed to MCSs (Villarini 2016;
(Wang et al. 2015). Sharing similar favorable large-scale at-
Dougherty and Rasmussen 2019). However, the climatology-
mospheric dynamic and thermodynamic conditions, multiple
MCSs may develop and interact with each other through
modulation of their common large-scale environment to form
Supplemental information related to this paper is available at an MCS cluster. Such clustering of MCS events can collec-
the Journals Online website: https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-22- tively affect areas well beyond that of each individual MCS,
0038.s1. leading to significant hydrologic impacts at larger scales than
the more localized effect of an individual MCS. Therefore,
Corresponding authors: Huancui Hu, huancui.hu@pnnl.gov; MCS clusters may contribute importantly to floods for two
L. Ruby Leung, ruby.leung@pnnl.gov reasons. First, local water budget is sensitive to precipitation

DOI: 10.1175/JHM-D-22-0038.1
Ó 2022 American Meteorological Society. For information regarding reuse of this content and general copyright information, consult the AMS Copyright
Policy (www.ametsoc.org/PUBSReuseLicenses).
1685
1686 JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY VOLUME 23

FIG. 1. (a) Hovmöller diagram for MCS rainfall in May 2015 averaged over 288–408N and 1108–848W, with MCS clusters indicated by
blue shading and missing rainfall data indicated by gray shading. (b)–(d) Rainfall (mm) accumulated over the lifetime of MCSs A, B, and C.
(e)–(g) Surface runoff generated by MCSs A, B, and C. (h)–(j) Flood episodes associated with MCSs A, B, and C, with rainfall coverage area
indicated by gray shading. Flood episodes are categorized as slow-rising flood (blue circle), flash flood (orange star), and hybrid flood (green
triangle). Each row in (b)–(j) shares the color bar on the right.

input, and rainfall intensity can have a major influence on
surface runoff production (Vischel et al. 2009; Boone et al.
2009; Best et al. 2015). Second, the occurrence of clustered
MCSs exposes substantial areas under the influence of in-
tense rainfall. Because rainfall area is positively correlated
with MCS-related flooding occurrence (Hu et al. 2021a), the
intense rainfall of MCSs with or without significant overlap-
ping area can possibly initiate floods over a more extended
area covered by clustered MCSs. However, studies of clus-
tered MCSs were limited to cases or one season (Trier et al.
2006, 2014), while the occurrence and seasonality of clustered
MCSs and their associated flood risk are largely unknown.
In addition to the wide coverage area characterized by in-
tense rainfall, another interesting aspect associated with clus-
tered MCSs is the overlapping of rainfall areas among MCS
events that can repeatedly affect the same area within a short
time period. This is particularly the case for clustered MCSs
associated with long-lived mesoscale convective vortex gener-
ated by MCSs, which can induce organized secondary convec-
tions within or in the proximity of the mesoscale convective
vortex (Fritsch et al. 1994; Bartels and Maddox 1991; Trier
et al. 2000; Trier and Davis 2002). The resultant successive
time–space coherent episodes of heavy rainfall occurring over
approximately the same location have been described as
heavy rainfall “corridors” (Tuttle and Davis 2006; Trier et al.
2014) and may contribute more readily to flooding. This is
likely the case because earlier MCSs within the cluster can
effectively moisten the soils to precondition for saturation–
excess flow and contribute to flooding when subsequent
MCSs from the same cluster pass over the same area. Such
preconditioning of land surface has been known to play a cen-
tral role in flood frequency and magnitude (Berghuijs et al.
2016; Ye et al. 2017). With a wet initial soil condition, flood
discharges can be very sensitive to even short-lived rainfall
events, while in a dry condition substantial amounts of rainfall
can infiltrate into the soils and contribute to slower subsurface
processes instead of a rapid flood response (Zhu et al. 2018).
To better understand flood risk associated with the causative
meteorological events and other flood generation processes
over an extended area well beyond traditional catchment scale
has been one of the emerging perspectives to advance flood re-
search (Merz et al. 2014; Kundzewicz et al. 2014). Floods and
weather systems are closely connected because weather sys-
tems cannot only substantially determine precipitation charac-
teristics such as intensity and area coverage, but also affect soil
moisture states through precipitation wetting and evaporative
drying by modulating cloud and precipitation processes and
surface energy balances, respectively. Both precipitation char-
acteristics and soil conditions are critical drivers of flooding
and thus different types of weather systems are intimately re-
lated with the regional flood characteristics (Villarini 2016;
Saharia et al. 2017). This effort to associate flood risk with
causative weather events has been possible by linking flood
statistics with continental-to-global-scale precipitation datasets
NOVEMBER 2022 HU ET AL.
and/or terrestrial features (Dougherty and Rasmussen 2019;
Saharia et al. 2017). For MCS-related flooding, Hu et al.
(2021a) examined the flood likelihood by linking the warm-
season flood occurrence documented by the National Centers
for Environment Information (NCEI) Storm Events Database
with a long-term MCS tracking dataset (Feng 2019). While the
work in Hu et al. (2021a) set the stage for our current study by
demonstrating the strong connection between floods and MCS
rainfall, our emphasis for this study is the flood risk associated
with clustered MCSs. Our focus on clustered MCS events is
largely motivated by their much broader area of impact beyond
individual MCSs, which can expose more regions to flooding
solely due to their strong rainfall intensity. We are also
interested in the role of land surface in affecting flooding
likelihood, particularly for regions experiencing repeated
wetting due to successive MCS passages. In addition to their
high impact, a better understanding of clustered MCSs may
also help reduce uncertainties in flood forecasting because
the favorable atmospheric environments that sustain clus-
tered MCSs may be more predictable than those of individ-
ual MCSs (Trier et al. 2014), and the flood probability of
precipitation conditioned on wet soils may be higher (Sharma
et al. 2018; Zhu et al. 2018; Wright et al. 2020), which is likely
the case for MCS clusters.
Therefore, in this study, we aim to extend the MCS–flood
linkage identified by Hu et al. (2021a) by quantifying the flood
frequency associated with MCS clusters. Our goal is to ex-
plore the relationship between flood occurrence and rainfall
characteristics associated with MCS clusters, as well as the
role of initial soil wetness on modulating flood responses. In
this study, flood frequency quantification is mainly examined
in the context of MCS-related floods rather than all floods, as
we emphasize the differences between clustered and nonclus-
tered MCSs, while the flood frequency differences between
MCS and non-MCS events are discussed in Hu et al. (2021a).
Our analysis is designed to address three questions: 1) What
is the flood likelihood associated with MCS clusters? 2) What
are the differences of MCS characteristics and terrestrial con-
ditions for clustered and nonclustered MCSs, and how are
flood occurrences modulated by these characteristics? 3) For
each MCS cluster, what are the dominant factors for flood oc-
currence and durations?
To develop a joint view of MCS-related rainfall and land
surface conditions on flood responses, we link flood occur-
rence reported by the NCEI Storm Events Database with a
high-resolution observation-based MCS dataset (Hu et al.
2021a) and land surface conditions and processes provided
by a land surface simulation. Section 2 describes the three
datasets and the algorithm we used to identify MCS clusters,
as well as how we attribute floods to the rainfall and soil
conditions associated with MCS clusters. Section 3 presents
the extreme case in May 2015 to illustrate the interactions
between rainfall and terrestrial responses, while section 4
explores the climatology relationships between flood occur-
rence and MCS clusters. We test the sensitivity of the pa-
rameters determining MCS cluster in section 5 and conclude
in section 6.
1687
2. Materials and methods
a. MCS dataset
Similar to Hu et al. (2021a), we use the high-resolution
(4 km, hourly) MCS dataset (Feng 2019) developed by Feng
et al. (2019), which provides the track of each MCS occurring
between January 2004 and December 2017 over the United
States. This MCS database is obtained by applying the Flexible
Object Tracker (FLEXTRKR) algorithm (Feng et al. 2018)
to track MCSs defined by large cold cloud shields containing
a radar-defined precipitation feature (PF, a contiguous area
with rain rate . 1 mm h21) with a major axis length . 100 km
and a convective feature containing radar reflectivity . 45 dBZ
at any vertical level that persists for longer than 6 h (Feng et al.
2018, 2019). The cold cloud, precipitation, and radar informa-
tion are obtained from the NASA Global MergedIR satellite
dataset (Janowiak et al. 2001), Stage IV multisensory precipi-
tation dataset (Lin 2011) and 3D radar reflectivity mosaic
from the GridRad NEXRAD radar dataset (Bowman and
Homeyer 2017), respectively [see Feng et al. (2019) for more
technical details]. By tracking each MCS, this MCS dataset
provides important quantifications of MCS PF characteristics
(e.g., lifetime, propagation, and convective and stratiform rain-
fall separation) that are used in this study to explore the link-
ages with flood frequency.
We note that the above algorithm and thresholds for PF
size, radar reflectivity and durations used by FLEXTRKR are
rooted in the current definition of MCS events with the goal
to detect the largest form of deep convective storms. The
MCS dataset in our study generally yields consistent climatol-
ogy of MCS in the United States from other studies (Geerts
1998; Pinto et al. 2015; Prein 2017; Haberlie and Ashley
2019), with an emphasis on the long-lived MCSs by requiring
a minimum of 6-h lifetime. It is possible that a detected MCS
is embedded in a synoptic system (e.g., extratropical cyclone)
or demonstrates frontal features (Kunkel et al. 2012; Ralph
et al. 2011; Trier et al. 2014). Therefore, it is important to
note that the MCS dataset does not exclude events that might
be driven by synoptic systems other than mesoscale processes,
but rather it aims to capture all the rainy events that match
the MCS characteristics.
It is also important to note that the rain rate threshold
value we use to define PFs (1 mm h21) seems moderate, but
using a low-to-moderate threshold value is critical to capture
the complete life cycle of each MCS. Defining PF areas using
a higher threshold value would certainly lead to smaller PF
areas at each time step, but it does not reduce the detected
number of MCS events substantially (see an example in
Fig. S1 in the online supplemental material for 2015). In other
words, most of the MCSs are characterized by active precipi-
tation areas with rain rate exceeding 5 mm h21, which lasts
for at least 6 h. Compared to using 1 mm h21 to define PFs,
using a higher threshold value could arbitrarily truncate the
lifetime of an MCS by excluding time steps after its initiation
or before its decay, causing an underestimation of the MCS
duration and coverage area (Fig. S1). For this study, it is criti-
cal to capture the complete life cycle of each MCS to correctly
identify the initial soil conditions at the time of MCS initiation.
1688 JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY
Truncation of the MCS lifetime due to the use of a higher
rain rate threshold can result in initial soil moisture state
that has been preconditioned by earlier stages of the same
MCS with lighter rain rate instead of the pre-event soil
conditions.
b. NCEI Storm Events Database
The flood dataset we link with MCSs are the floods docu-
mented by the NCEI Storm Events Database. The Storm
Events Database records the time and locations for significant
meteorological events and related phenomena of great socie-
tal impacts since 1950, compiled from National Weather Ser-
vice (NWS) and other sources including media and law
enforcement (NWS 2018). Due to its emphasis on societal im-
pacts, this dataset tends to weigh more heavily on events af-
fecting urban areas or areas with dense population, while
small events or large events with less socioeconomic impacts
might be underreported (Ashley and Ashley 2008; Barthold
et al. 2015). However, comparisons with other streamflow
based hydrologic flood datasets support the sufficient cover-
age of floods both spatially and temporally by this Storm
Events Database (Dougherty and Rasmussen 2019; Gourley
et al. 2013). In addition, this database distinguishes “flash
floods” from other floods because of their rapid surge of
water and the shortage of time to mitigate that can cause
significant fatality and property damages (NWS 2018). Other
floods with high flow, overflow, or inundation that cause
damage are grouped as slow-rising floods (Dougherty and
Rasmussen 2019).
Our analysis of flood frequency and durations is based on
flood episodes from the Storm Events Database, which can
encompass multiple flood events associated with the same
synoptic meteorological system (NWS 2018). Therefore, in
addition to flash and slow-rising flood episodes that embody
only flash or slow-rising flood events, flood episodes involving
a combination of flash and slow-rising flood events are catego-
rized as hybrid flood episodes (following Dougherty and
Rasmussen 2019). From April to August in 2007–17, a total of
7106 flash flood episodes, 2842 slow-rising flood episodes, and
1238 hybrid flood episodes are collected east of 1108W in the
United States, which corresponds to the spatial coverage of
the MCS dataset. Note that we exclude the data before 2007
because flood occurrence is substantially lower than that after
2007, presumably due to coverage biases (Hu et al. 2021a).
These flood episodes are attributed to MCSs and MCS clus-
ters (explained in section 2e).
c. Land surface data
To account for the land surface processes that can be criti-
cal for flood generation, we use a set of high-resolution model
output from the Noah-MP land surface model (Niu et al.
2011). The simulation is configured to cover a similar spatial
area as the North American Land Data Assimilation System
(NLDAS; 1/88 grids) but with a finer 4-km grid spacing to
better account for the land surface heterogeneity (1/88-grid
forcing data bilinearly interpolated to the finer land surface model
grid). The default soil layer configurations (0.1, 0.3, 0.6, 1.0 m in
VOLUME 23
thickness from top to bottom) is used. The model is initialized
at 0000 UTC 1 March of each year using the soil states from
the Noah simulation in the NLDAS archive for the same year
and run for 6 months until 31 August, driven by the NLDAS
atmospheric forcing including precipitation, radiation, near-
surface air temperature, wind and humidity, and surface pres-
sure. The model reaches an equilibrium within the first month
(see an example in Fig. S2), so data from April to August in
2007–17 are used in our analysis.
This dataset has been validated by comparing observational-
based evapotranspiration estimation and other NLDAS model
outputs (Hu et al. 2020b). For evapotranspiration, our simula-
tion reproduces the large east–west gradients in the central
United States but overestimates the evapotranspiration, espe-
cially over the northern Great Plains relative to the MODIS
and FLUXNET estimated evapotranspiration. However, our
land surface data produce very similar patterns as seen in
other land surface simulations archived by NLDAS-2 pro-
duced by other land surface models, including evapotranspira-
tion, surface runoff, and soil moisture (see more details in Hu
et al. 2020b). In this study, we use the soil moisture and surface
runoff from our Noah-MP simulations at 4-km grid spacing to
analyze the terrestrial conditions and responses to individual
MCSs and MCS clusters. Note that like most of the current
land surface models, the Noah-MP model dataset does not ex-
plicitly represent the terrain slopes and related lateral water
movement, which likely affect soil moisture and runoff. How-
ever, datasets accounting for terrain effects with similar spatial
and temporal coverages are not currently available.
d. Identify MCS clusters
We use the locations and sizes of MCS PFs throughout
their lifetimes to identify clustered MCSs. We first identify
MCS pairs that are close in time and space if their PF distance
is within a small time range. We then group MCS pairs having
overlapping MCSs, and each group with at least three distinc-
tive MCSs is identified as an MCS cluster. The PF distances
are calculated by Eq. (1) similar to the method used by Feng
et al. (2015):
D12 5 Dc12 2 L1 /2 2 L2 /2, (1)
where Dc12 is the distance between the centers of two MCSs
with PF1 and PF2, and L1 and L2 are the major axis lengths of
PF1 and PF2, respectively.
If the MCS PFs have circular shapes, D12 represents the dis-
tance between the edges of the MCS PFs. However, MCSs in
the United States are frequently organized to some form of
quasi-linear modes (Parker and Johnson 2000; Cui et al. 2021)
and noncircular MCSs that occur close to each other in space
and time may result in a negative distance [Eq. (1)].
To ensure the MCSs in a cluster are close in time and space,
we use the thresholds for distance (dx) and time (dt) to be
0 and 4 h. Two circular PFs with D12 , 0 would suggest an
overlapping of PF areas while noncircular PFs, which may not
overlap, are at least in the vicinity of each other and may con-
tribute to the same flooding at a basin outlet if they produce
rainfall in the same drainage area. And a 4-h time window
NOVEMBER 2022 HU ET AL.
allows some time lag between MCSs to capture events that
have similar pathways but a few hours apart. Using dx 5 0
and dt 5 4 h, a total of 291 MCS clusters are identified during
April–August 2007–17, with a total of 1262 MCSs considered
in clustered form out of a total of 3447 MCSs (data before
2007 are not used due to some issues with the flood data; see
section 2b). These 291 MCS clusters detected with dx 5 0 and
dt 5 4 h are used for the majority of analysis of this study.
Despite using this simple method to identify MCS clusters
based on major axis distances, we confirm that pixel-level
overlapping between PFs occurs among the MCSs within
every cluster using this set of parameters. However, we note
that the parameters dx and dt are somewhat arbitrarily de-
fined to constrain the spatial and temporal distances between
the PFs of the MCS pairs that define the MCS clusters. As ex-
pected, the number of MCS clusters are subject to the differ-
ent values of dx and dt. To address this, we test the sensitivity
of MCS clusters and their related floods to these parameters
in section 5.
In addition, merging and splitting of storms are taken into
account in the MCS tracking (Feng et al. 2019). While it is
possible that two MCSs merging into a larger MCS (or a large
MCS splitting into smaller MCSs) may contribute to the same
MCS cluster, each of them must meet the criteria of MCS fea-
tures defined by the FLEXTRKR algorithm before merging
(or after splitting). For example, we visually checked the
MCS life cycle characteristics for 2015 and found that out of
149 clustered MCSs, 36 split from their “parent” MCSs while
12 merged into preexisting MCSs. Each of these child and
parent systems maintain their sizes and lifetimes as proper
MCSs. They often occur within clusters consisting of more
than 5 MCSs and thus using a different approach to treat split-
ting/merging is unlikely to affect the cluster occurrence.
Therefore, merging or splitting MCSs are considered as part
of an MCS cluster as they can collectively have significant hy-
drologic impacts regardless of their origin or evolution.
e. Attribute floods to MCSs and MCS clusters
The flood episodes of different types in April–August
(2007–17) are then attributed to MCS events and MCS clus-
ters according to their time and location of occurrence
(Hu et al. 2021a). Flood episodes are attributed to an MCS if
floods occur within its total PF coverage area or less than
20 km apart during the lifetime of the MCS. We note that the
20-km threshold is tested by Hu et al. (2021a) and selected
due to its optimal effect to distinguish floods associated with
MCS and non-MCS storms but also allow for the downstream
effects of rainstorms on flooding. The same is applied to MCS
clusters by attributing flood episodes to an MCS cluster if
they occur within or less than 20 km from the total PF cover-
age area over the lifetime of the MCS cluster.
Due to their potential importance to flooding, we pay par-
ticular attention to the overlapping PF areas among MCS
clusters, defined as PF areas with at least 2 MCS passages in
the same cluster. As mentioned earlier, all the MCS clusters
have overlapping PF areas by the method described in section 2d.
Such overlapping of PF areas among MCSs in the same cluster
1689
indicates repeated wetting of the same region within a short
time period before substantial adjustments of soil moisture
such as evapotranspiration and subsurface drainage so the
terrestrial conditions are more favorable for flooding. On
one hand, we use the overlapping areas as one of the PF
characteristics to examine its relationship with the overall
flood frequency associated with each cluster. On the other
hand, we quantify the likelihood of flood occurrence as a
function of the overlapping areas by further attributing the
cluster-related floods to their overlapping areas if the floods
occur within the 20-km range of the PF overlap areas,
following the same general methodology. Although storms
can co-contribute to basin saturation and potentially flood-
ing due to lateral movement of water even without spatial
overlapping of storms, our ability to analyze such effect is
limited because such lateral runoff responses are generally
not represented in most current land surface models (Fan
et al. 2019) or land surface datasets (section 2c). More ad-
vanced hydrologic models that account for lateral routing
would be necessary for such purposes (Getirana et al. 2014;
Gochis et al. 2018), which are beyond the scope of this
study. Currently, we focus on the land surface responses to
storms with overlapping PF coverage areas, which happen
in all MCS clusters based on our definition.
f. Rainfall and terrestrial characteristics of MCSs and
MCS clusters
To explore the factors controlling or modulating the flood
occurrence and potentially durations associated with each
MCS or MCS cluster, we combine the PF characteristics from
the MCS dataset (section 2a) and the terrestrial responses
from the land surface dataset (section 2c). In addition to the
instantaneous PF characteristics, event-total PF characteris-
tics are particularly important for flood frequency (Hu et al.
2021a) and therefore are of our major focus. Accordingly, the
soil moisture conditions and runoff generation over the event-
total PF coverage areas are extracted and used for our analy-
sis (section 4). The soil moisture conditions are quantified in
two ways: soil moisture anomaly is calculated by comparing
the soil moisture with the climatological value of the same
day in the seasonal cycle, and the percentile of soil moisture
with respect to the historical samples on the same day of
the seasonal cycle over the same coverage area. To contrast the
differences of the overlapping areas with the rest (section 4c),
the PF characteristics and terrestrial variables are also ex-
tracted over the overlapping areas. For most of our analysis,
we use the initial soil moisture states immediately before the
initiation of an MCS or a MCS cluster to study their relation-
ship with flood characteristics. As the initial soil moisture
anomalies capture the soil states before they are modulated
by the MCS or MCS clusters, they reflect the net effect of
water gaining (e.g., snowmelt, non-MCS precipitation, earlier-
season MCS events) and losing processes (e.g., evapotranspi-
ration, runoffs) unrelated to the MCS or MCS clusters. To
illustrate the role of successive wetting by clustered MCSs, we
also compare the soil moisture conditions after the passage of
MCSs over the overlapping areas in section 4c.
1690 JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY VOLUME 23

FIG. 2. (a)–(f) MCS tracks within each MCS cluster identified in May 2015 and
(g)–(l) flood episodes associated with each MCS cluster. Each MCS is tracked with a
unique ID in the MCS dataset and color shaded in (a)–(f). Gray shadings in (g)–(l) in-
dicate the total PF coverage area of each MCS cluster.
NOVEMBER 2022 HU ET AL. 1691

TABLE 1. List of flood episodes associated with MCSs A, B, and C in section 3.

Episode Flood type Starting time End time State Related MCS
1 95612 Slow-rising 1800 UTC 5 May 2015 0500 UTC 1 Jun 2015 Oklahoma A, B, C
2 95615 Slow-rising 0600 UTC 6 May 2015 0500 UTC 1 Jun 2015 Texas A, B, C
3 94168 Slow-rising 0300 UTC 7 May 2015 0000 UTC 11 May 2015 Nebraska B
4 96627 Hybrid 1900 UTC 8 May 2015 1100 UTC 11 May 2015 Arkansas A, B, C
5 94239 Flash 0700 UTC 9 May 2015 2200 UTC 9 May 2015 Oklahoma A
6 95504 Hybrid 1400 UTC 9 May 2015 2100 UTC 11 May 2015 Texas A, B, C
7 94240 Flash 2000 UTC 9 May 2015 2300 UTC 9 May 2015 Arkansas A
8 97778 Slow-rising 2100 UTC 10 May 2015 0500 UTC 1 Jun 2015 Arkansas B, C
9 96013 Hybrid 2000 UTC 10 May 2015 0000 UTC 11 May 2015 South Dakota B
10 94244 Flash 0600 UTC 11 May 2015 0900 UTC 11 May 2015 Arkansas C
11 94243 Flash 0600 UTC 11 May 2015 1200 UTC 11 May 2015 Texas C
12 94972 Slow-rising 0700 UTC 11 May 2015 1500 UTC 11 May 2015 Missouri C
13 95618 Flash 1100 UTC 11 May 2015 1600 UTC 11 May 2015 Texas C
14 97954 Slow-rising 1300 UTC 11 May 2015 2200 UTC 12 May 2015 Illinois C

3. MCS clusters in May 2015
We use the extreme case of May 2015 as an example to
demonstrate the detection of MCS clusters and the impact of
repeated wetting due to overlapping PF. Using the method
described in section 2d, 6 MCS clusters are identified in May
2015 (shaded in blue in Fig. 1a). The first MCS cluster occur-
ring during 4–6 May mainly produced rainfall over northern
Texas, while the following 5 MCS clusters were shifted a bit
eastward and passed over eastern Texas and Oklahoma
(MCS tracks for each cluster are shown in Fig. 2). The second
MCS cluster during 9–13 May is particularly interesting, not
only because this MCS cluster consisted of 9 MCSs, but 3 of
them followed very similar paths (referred to as MCSs A, B,
C) over the Texas–Oklahoma region within 50 h (Figs. 1b–d).
MCS A (9–10 May) strongly affected Oklahoma, but areas
with accumulated rainfall exceeding 50 mm also extended to
Arkansas and northeast Texas (Fig. 1b). Analysis of the land
surface data indicates that ∼13% of rainfall from this MCS is
estimated to contribute to runoff (Fig. 1e), while the rest en-
ters the soils and can later contribute to evapotranspiration
on a longer time scale (Hu et al. 2021b). MCS A induced two
flash floods (episodes 94239 and 94240) and two hybrid floods
that lasted until 11 May (Table 1). It also contributed to the
two slow-rising floods on the Red River in southeast Okla-
homa and northeast Texas that were induced by the first MCS
cluster on 4–6 May (Figs. 1h, 2a and Table 1). The next MCS
B (10 May) was weaker in terms of accumulated rainfall but a
slightly higher fraction (14.3%) of its rainfall became runoff
(Figs. 1c,f). It contributed to multiple preexisting slow-rising
and hybrid floods, but also induced a slow-rising flood in
Arkansas and a hybrid flood in South Dakota (Fig. 1i) due to
the preexisting anomalously wet soil conditions at these loca-
tions (Fig. S3). On the next day, MCS C (11 May) struck the
same area by bringing substantial amounts of rainfall over
eastern Texas and Arkansas, with 16.5% of its rainfall turning
into runoff (Figs. 1d,g). Consequently, it enhanced the slow-
rising and hybrid floods in Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas,
and produced flash floods in these states and slow-rising
floods in Missouri and Illinois (Fig. 1j and Table 1). Notice
that the Red River flooding observed in Texas and Oklahoma
and other rivers in Arkansas remained above the flood stage
at the end of May (episodes 95612, 95615, 97778; all ended
abruptly on 1 June, probably due to the flood entry segre-
gated by month), associated with the excessive rainfall over
similar area by the subsequent MCSs and MCS clusters.
For the entire cluster that includes 9 MCSs (9–13 May), the
overlapping PF areas is 1.678 3 106 km2 while the total PF
coverage area is 3.759 3 106 km2, resulting in an overlapping
fraction of 44.6% (Fig. 2b). Twenty-three of the 26 flood epi-
sodes (4 slow-rising, 13 flash, and 6 hybrid floods) are found
in the proximity of the overlapping areas (Figs. 2b,h). Consis-
tent with the increase of runoff generation ratio associated
with MCSs A, B, and C, the initial soil moisture conditions
over the overlapping areas also become wetter following the
passage of the sequential of MCSs, changing from 48.8% to
91.7%. Due to uncertainties in the land surface data, the run-
off generation ratios and soil moisture percentiles should only
be used as indications of terrestrial dynamics rather than ex-
act quantifications of the surface water budgets. The continu-
ous moistening of the soils illustrates that MCSs sequentially
passing over similar areas may contribute to/induce slow-rising
floods by producing a higher fraction of saturation–excess
surface runoff that can continuously converge toward the
basin outlet and extend the flood durations. Meanwhile, Fig. 2
also indicates a wide span of flood locations that can possibly
occur over each cluster’s PF coverage area, including flash
floods that were induced by MCSs in clustered form that pro-
duced rainfall intensity exceeding the infiltration rate of the
land surface.
4. Establishing the links between floods and
MCS clusters
a. Seasonal mean of flood frequency associated with
MCS clusters
Hu et al. (2021a) separately related flood frequency with
MCS and non-MCS storms and found that MCSs account for
most of the warm-season floods in the United States east of
1108W, especially for slow-rising and hybrid floods. But flash
1692 JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY VOLUME 23

FIG. 3. (a) Flood episode frequency in each month and flood attribution to MCSs and clustered MCSs aggregated
over the area to the east of 1108W. (b) Monthly frequency of MCSs and clustered MCSs. (c)–(h) Spatial distributions
of MCS-related flood frequency of each flood type and fraction of each flood type associated with clustered MCSs.
Panels (c), (e), and (g) share the same color bar at the bottom left, and (d), (f), and (h) share the same color bar at the
bottom right.
NOVEMBER 2022 HU ET AL.
FIG. 4. (a)–(e) MCS frequency, (f)–(j) clustered MCS frequency, and (k)–(o) the fractions of clustered MCS to all MCS in each month.
floods in July and August are also frequently associated with
non-MCS convections (Fig. 3a) that occur often in the Rocky
Mountains and Appalachian Mountains. As noted, we focus
on quantifying flood frequency associated with MCS clusters
in the context of MCS-related floods rather than all floods in
the following analysis.
Using 11 years of data in 2007–17, we find that MCS-related
flooding is more likely to be associated with MCS clusters in
early warm season (April–June), regardless of flood types
(cf. black hatched and red stippled areas in Fig. 3a). For slow-
rising floods that occur more frequently in April–June than
later months over the northern Great Plains (north of 358N),
more than 75% of MCS-related flooding is associated with
MCS clusters in these months (83.3%, 85.0%, and 75.2% re-
spectively for April, May, and June; Figs. 3c, Figs. S4a–c,
S5a–c). In July and August, the fraction is reduced to 44.1%
and 48.5%, resulting in less than 10 flood episodes per month.
Similar fractions and decreasing trend with months during the
warm season are found for hybrid floods observed in
378–438N (Fig. 3h and Figs. S5k–o).
For flash floods, most MCS-related floods occur between
1058 and 908W (Fig. 3e), while flash floods near the Rocky
Mountains and Appalachian Mountains attributable to non-
MCS thunderstorms are not included in Fig. 3e. In April and
May when flash floods are often observed in the southern
Great Plains, greater fractions of MCS-related floods are asso-
ciated with MCS clusters: 79.3% of in April and 58.9% in
May (Fig. 3a and Figs. S5f–j). But for June–August when flash
floods occur more frequently, the fraction is reduced to 56.
5%, 31.0%, and 43.3%, respectively. While the flash floods
shift northward in these months, we find that clustered MCSs
tend to favor flash floods in the southern states (Figs. S4f–j,
S5f–j).
1693
The larger fractions of flood episodes associated with MCS
clusters in early months are consistent with the higher occur-
rence of MCS clusters in these months (Fig. 3b). Using the
dx 5 0 and dt 5 4 h criteria, the fraction of clustered MCSs is
57.2% in April, ∼40% in May and June, and 22.7% and
30.7% in July and August. As a result, 23–29 MCSs in clus-
tered form occur in each month from April–June, although
fewer MCSs are observed in April and May. This can be par-
tially attributed to the fact that MCSs in the earlier warm sea-
son are subject to stronger synoptic forcing (Song et al. 2019),
which are more likely to support the development of multiple
spatially and/or temporally connected MCSs. MCS PF areas
are also larger in the early months, resulting in smaller PF dis-
tances between MCSs. We also find that the frequency of clus-
tered MCSs shows a northward migration from April to
August (Fig. 6), similar to the northward migration of all
MCSs through the warm season. However, the fraction of
MCSs associated with MCS clusters shows higher values south
of ∼378N throughout the warm season (Figs. 4k–o). This ex-
plains the greater fraction of MCS-related flash floods in the
southern states (Figs. S5f–j), while no such preference is no-
ticeable for slow-rising or hybrid floods that mostly occur in
the northern Great Plains (Figs. S5a–e,k–o). This southern
preference for clustered MCSs might be related to its proxim-
ity to the Gulf of Mexico that can provide abundant moisture
supply for the redevelopment of MCSs in a short period of
time. More specific investigations of the synoptic environ-
ments in the future would be necessary in order to fully ex-
plain the southern preference of MCS clusters. Notice that
the fractions of floods associated with clustered MCSs to total
MCS-related floods (Figs. 3d,f,h) always exceed the fractions
of clustered MCSs to total MCSs (Figs. 4k–o), regardless of
flood types. This indicates that clustered MCSs are more
1694 JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY
FIG. 5. (a) MCS cluster frequency in each month color coded by
the dominant flood type associated with each MCS cluster. (b) Aver-
aged flood occurrence of each type associated with flood-producing
MCS clusters in each month. (c) Flood occurrence (left y axis) and du-
rations (right y axis) associated with nonclustered and clustered
MCSs, with boxplots showing durations shaded by orange.
effective in producing flooding. This is also supported by Fig. 5c
showing significantly higher frequency of slow-rising and hybrid
floods induced by a clustered MCS compared with MCSs that
are not clustered. Clustered MCSs also tend to produce floods
with significantly longer durations. The factors that can contrib-
ute to the more effective and long-lasting floods associated with
clustered MCSs is examined in section 4b.
On average, about 4–7 MCS clusters (each consisting of
4.3 MCSs on average) occur in each month during the warm
season, with a peak frequency in June (Fig. 5a). Grouping the
MCS clusters by the dominant flood type associated with each
MCS cluster, about 2.5 MCS clusters cause slow-rising flood
in April–June and 2–4 MCS clusters cause flash floods in each
month, with a peak in June. Furthermore, in each month, less
than one MCS cluster is not associated with any type of flood-
ing so there is a high likelihood of flooding when an MCS
cluster occurs. Notably, only 8 MCS clusters (out of 291 in
total) are not associated with flooding. For the MCS clusters
that lead to flooding, each MCS cluster in April can lead to
24 flood events, with ∼12 slow-rising floods, 9 flash floods,
and 3 hybrid floods (Fig. 5b). The flood number decreases to
∼18 in May and June with comparable number of slow-rising
and flash floods, and further reduces to ∼10 floods in July and
VOLUME 23
August with mostly flash floods because of the greater MCS
rainfall intensity in these months.
b. Differences between clustered and nonclustered MCSs
and relationship with flood frequency
To understand the factors contributing to the greater flood
occurrence associated with clustered MCSs relative to non-
clustered MCSs (Fig. 5c), we now examine their differences in
both MCS rainfall characteristics and land surface conditions.
For the MCS PF characteristics, MCSs that belong to clusters
have longer durations and larger instantaneous rainfall areas
compared to nonclustered MCSs, while propagation speeds
and instantaneous rain rates are not significantly different
(Figs. 6a–d; means and significance level indicated by Table S2).
As a result, each clustered MCS has significantly larger event-
total rainfall coverage area and greater total rainfall volume
than individual MCSs that are not clustered (Figs. 6e,f). The
greater rainfall areas and volumes per MCS in clustered MCSs
are likely contributed by favorable synoptic conditions that sup-
port sequential development of MCSs over consecutive days
[see case studies by Trier et al. (2006, 2014)]. In addition to the
fact that clustered MCSs are generally stronger in terms of PF
coverage area and rainfall volume, their preferential association
with flooding is also supported by the terrestrial conditions. We
find that clustered MCSs generally occur over wetter initial soil
moisture conditions (Figs. 6g,h) in the late summer months and
becomes especially important for generating floods as soils are
generally drier in those months. Such wetter initial soil moisture
conditions can be a result of repeated wetting that we see in the
May 2015 case (section 3), but it is also possible that MCS clus-
ters are more likely to occur over a wetter surface as a result of
land–atmosphere interactions (Trier et al. 2008). However, the
causes of these MCS clusters are beyond the scope of this study
but could be a very interesting topic for future research. Due to
the differences in rainfall characteristics and land surface condi-
tions, each MCS in clustered form on average can produce sub-
stantially greater runoff than a nonclustered MCS (Fig. 6i).
Because not all MCSs are associated with flooding, it is also
important for us to understand the differences in flood-
producing MCSs and the rest that do not produce floods. Due
to the favorable conditions for flooding associated with clus-
tered MCSs, we find that ∼64% clustered MCSs are associ-
ated with floods (807 out of 1262 clustered MCSs) while
∼50% of nonclustered MCSs are associated with floods (1102
out of 2185 nonclustered MCSs). Note that this fraction is dif-
ferent from the flood-producing MCS clusters (Fig. 5a) be-
cause each MCS belonging to an MCS cluster is treated
individually rather than treating each MCS cluster as an en-
tity. Comparing MCSs that do not produce floods, perhaps
the most apparent difference is the PF areas in both clustered
and nonclustered MCSs (Figs. 7c,e). Significantly faster prop-
agations are also observed in clustered MCSs for flood-
producing ones but not seen in nonclustered MCSs (Fig. 7b).
Accordingly, flood-producing MCSs are characterized by signifi-
cantly greater PF coverage areas and event-total rainfall volumes
than nonflood producing ones (Figs. 7e,f). Also significantly dif-
ferent is the initial soil wetness that is supported by the wetter
NOVEMBER 2022 HU ET AL. 1695

FIG. 6. Boxplots of different characteristics for MCSs that are not clustered and clustered grouped by early warm-
season (April–June) and later warm season (July–August). Asterisks indicate where differences are significant (.99%
confidence level using the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test; also see Table S1).

initial soil moisture for flood-producing MCSs, which exists in
both clustered and nonclustered MCSs (Figs. 7g,h). As a result,
flood-producing MCSs are characterized by substantially greater
runoffs (Fig. 7i).
The critical roles of MCS PF characteristics and wetter
initial soils for floods are further supported by the relation-
ship between these factors and flood occurrence (Fig. 8). In
Fig. 8, we show the variations of MCSs’ rainfall and terres-
trial characteristics with slow-rising and flash flood occur-
rence separately in each panel, while the results of hybrid
floods are not included as hybrid floods have limited occur-
rence and they display similar relationships associated with
slow-rising and flash floods. Flood occurrence is shown in
both percentile and actual number in the x axis of each
panel. This analysis further confirmed the predominant role
of rainfall area on flood frequency identified by Hu et al.
(2021a), with a larger MCS PF area favoring higher flood oc-
currence. We see a similar increasing trend of flood fre-
quency with PF areas for each average MCS that is
nonclustered and clustered (Figs. 8a), while consistent with
Fig. 8e, the PF areas are generally larger for an average
MCS that is clustered. Similar increasing relationships are
found for the total PF rain volume (Fig. 8b), which exceeds
the rate of increase in the event-total PF coverage area thus
resulting in a greater rainfall per area with increasing flood
occurrence (Fig. 8c). For the land surface conditions, we
also find a clear increasing trend of flood occurrence for
MCSs occurring over wetter initial soils (Fig. 8d). As a con-
sequence of the joint role of greater rainfall per area and
wetter soils, MCSs that produce greater runoff and also
greater runoff generation ratios tend to result in more floods
(Figs. 8e,f). Such evident relationship between greater run-
off and flooding likelihood is consistent with precipitation
excess as the dominant flood generating mechanism over
the central United States (Berghuijs et al. 2016). The impor-
tant roles of PF characteristics (dominated by PF coverage
areas) and initial soil wetness are respectively tested by fur-
ther subgrouping MCSs with similar initial soil conditions
and those with similar PF coverage areas, and the relation-
ships we see in Fig. 8 still hold (Figs. S6, S7), indicating that
they can each play a distinctive role on flood frequency be-
sides their joint effect.
1696 JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY VOLUME 23

FIG. 7. Boxplots of different characteristics for MCSs that are flood-producing (light blue and brown boxes) and
not flood-producing (gray boxes) grouped by nonclustered and clustered MCSs. Asterisks indicate where differences
are significant (.99% confidence level using the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test; also see Table S2).

c. Relationship between cluster-total characteristics and
floods and the role of overlapping PFs
With each MCS in clustered form characterized with stron-
ger PF features (PF area and rainfall volumes), integrating
over an entire MCS cluster that contains at least 3 MCSs can
be of more significant impact. Indeed, an MCS cluster is very
likely to produce severe floods as described earlier in Fig. 6a.
Therefore, we integrate the individual MCS PF characteristics
within each MCS cluster treated as a unit (cluster-total PF
characteristics) and investigate their relationship with floods.
By integrating the PF features over the entire clusters, we find
a similar and evident increase of flood occurrence with the
cluster-total PF coverage areas and rain volumes (Figs. 9a,b).
Interestingly, MCS clusters associated with more floods are
also characterized with greater overlapping PF ratios (calcu-
lated as the ratio of PF areas with at least 2 MCS PF passages
to cluster-total PF coverage areas) among the MCSs in each
cluster (Fig. 9c), with overlapping PF illustrated by the exam-
ples we see in section 3. Such increase of overlapping areas
thus results in a greater rainfall per area over the overlapping
areas and thus increases rainfall per area over the whole clus-
ter-total PF coverage areas (Fig. 9d).
Analysis of initial soil moisture conditions over the cluster-
total PF coverage area using percentiles also indicates an in-
creasing trend of floods with initial soil wetness (Fig. 10a) as we
see in individual MCSs (Fig. 8d), reiterating the important role
of soil wetness to floods. Note that further testing by subgroup-
ing MCS clusters with similar cluster-total PF coverage areas
confirms such relationship (not shown). Subsequently, we see
an increasing trend of flood occurrence with MCS clusters oc-
curring over wetter initial soils that generate greater amounts of
surface runoff per area and greater runoff ratios (Figs. 10b,c).
We also find a more important role of terrestrial responses
in flood durations in contrast to PF characteristics. In general,
we find that floods associated with MCS clusters tend to last
longer if more surface runoff generation is present (Figs. 10f,g),
while such a relationship is not found for MCS PF areas or rain
volumes (not shown). Note that flood durations refer to the
mean durations of flood episodes associated with each MCS
cluster, and MCS clusters binned by flood durations in Figs. 9f,g
only account for flood durations but do not jointly account for
NOVEMBER 2022 HU ET AL. 1697

FIG. 8. Boxplots of event-total characteristics for MCSs that are nonclustered and clustered, binned by the occur-
rence of each flood type they are associated with. The different percentiles of flooding occurrence are listed at the bot-
tom of each column, color coded by flood types. See median values and correlations in Table S3.

flood occurrence. MCS clusters causing one or two floods but
with long durations, presumably due to favorable local terres-
trial conditions, can fall into the 90%–100% duration bin, but
these clusters are not necessarily the strongest ones leading to
more flood occurrence. This is the case for the relatively low
surface runoff ratios associated with the moderate MCS clusters,
leading to 1–2 slow-rising floods with .491.5 h of durations
(Figs. 9f,g). We also note that initial soil wetness can be impor-
tant to other aspects of flood severity (e.g., inundation area)
that are not available from the Storm Events Database.
To better understand the effect of the overlapping PF areas
on flooding indicated by Fig. 9c and the example in May 2015
(section 3) with successive MCS passages over the same area,
we quantify the flood frequency that occurs in the proximity
of the overlapping areas and analyze their rainfall and terres-
trial features over those areas. We find that 46.6% of floods
associated with MCS clusters occurs within or close to the
overlapping PF areas (43.4% for slow-rising, 45.8% for flash,
and 57.7% for hybrid floods). These fractions well exceed the
fraction of overlapping areas to total PF coverage areas
(20.9% on average; see variations in Fig. 9c), which indicates
a higher likelihood of floods occurring over overlapping areas.
Such higher flood occurrence is also supported by Fig. 10d
and is closely related with the repeated wetting of clustered
MCSs. Compared with the entire cluster-total PF coverage
areas, overlapping PF areas that receive rainfall from more
than one MCS are characterized by a much greater rainfall
per area (Fig. 11a). With a similar initial soil wetness, the
overlapping areas end up producing greater runoff per area
with a much wetter soil condition after the passage of the entire
cluster than the cluster-total PF coverage areas (Figs. 11a,b).
And such wetting occurs progressively throughout each cluster
(Fig. 11c), providing a continuously favorable condition for
flooding for the subsequent MCSs in the same cluster, while a
similar wetting trend is not observed for the nonoverlapping
areas (not shown).
5. Sensitivity to MCS clusters definition
As noted in section 2d, the detection of MCS clusters is
subject to the threshold parameters (dx and dt) that we used
to identify MCS clusters. In this section, we test the sensitivity
of our results to the dx and dt parameters we use to identify
MCS clusters. To achieve this, we perform two sets of analy-
ses by varying the dx and dt values, respectively, and compar-
ing how the MCS characteristics and flood occurrences
change with these parameters.
As expected, relaxing the dx or dt thresholds lead to more
MCSs in clusters while restraining dx and dt to smaller values
would identify fewer MCSs in clusters (black lines in Figs. S8a,f).
1698 JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY VOLUME 23

FIG. 9. Boxplots of cluster-total precipitation feature characteristics for MCS clusters, binned
by the occurrences of each flood type they are associated with. The different percentiles of flood-
ing occurrence are listed at the bottom of each column, color coded by flood types. See median
values and correlations in Table S4.

The number of MCS clusters also increases by relaxing dt/dx,
but at a slower rate (red lines in Figs. S8a,f). This indicates
more MCSs in each cluster with increasing dt/dx. However,
we find that the monthly distribution of clustered MCSs is al-
tered by the dt/dx changes (Figs. S8b,g). We see an evident
increase of clustered MCSs being identified in June with in-
creasing dt/dx, which shifts the peak month of cluster MCSs
from April with the smallest dt/dx thresholds to June with the
largest dt/dx (Figs. S8b,g). This shift of peak month to June,
which is slightly more evident with the dx changes (Fig. S8g),
is related to the generally smaller MCS PF areas but higher
MCS frequency in June (Figs. 3a, 8c). As a result, we see a
more noticeable shift of the MCS characteristics of clustered
MCSs toward the characteristics of June MCSs with increas-
ing dx, which tend to have slower propagation and smaller
PF rainfall volume (Figs. S8c,d,h,i). Consistent with the
monthly changes of clustered MCS with dt/dx, more flood ep-
isodes in June are found to be associated with MCS clusters
with greater dt/dx values, while flood frequency associated with
MCS clusters peaks in April with smaller dt/dx (Figs. S8e,j).
However, the differences between nonclustered and clustered
MCSs in Fig. 6 and the relationship between flood occurrence
and cluster-total characteristics shown in Fig. 9 still hold by
changing the dt/dx thresholds (see examples in Figs. S9–14).
Therefore, we conclude that our results showing the different
features of clustered MCSs, particularly the greater PF rainfall
per volume and greater runoff generation, and their relation-
ship with flood occurrence are not sensitive to the dt and dx
parameters we use to define MCS clusters.
6. Discussion and conclusions
In this study, we extend the MCS–flood linkage established
by Hu et al. (2021a) by focusing on the relationship between
flood frequency and MCS clusters, which can have a much
larger impact than each individual MCS and tend to produce
more extreme floods. Importantly, we incorporate terrestrial
conditions in our analysis in addition to MCS PF characteris-
tics, which are critical for flood generation but not discussed
in Hu et al. (2021a). By linking floods reported by the NCEI
Storm Event Database with MCS clusters in the warm season
that occurred in the central-eastern United States, we quan-
tify the flood occurrence associated with MCS clusters and ex-
amine how the flood occurrence and duration changes with
the different MCS and terrestrial characteristics. In particular,
we examine the role of overlapping PF areas within each
MCS cluster that can experience sequential rainfall. We sum-
marize the key findings as below:
• MCS clusters occur more frequently in the earlier warm
season (April–June) and over the southern states (Figs. 3b
and 4). Accordingly, floods in early warm season are more
likely to be associated with MCS clusters, while the south-
ern preference for floods is less evident (Fig. 3).
• Each flood-producing MCS in clustered form lasts signifi-
cantly longer and can lead to more floods than MCSs that
are not clustered (Fig. 7). Clustered MCSs are more effective
in producing floods due to their significantly greater rainfall
volumes as well as wetter initial soil conditions that cause
greater surface runoff than nonclustered MCSs (Fig. 8).
NOVEMBER 2022 HU ET AL. 1699

FIG. 10. Boxplots of cluster-total terrestrial characteristics for MCS clusters, binned by the
(a)–(d) occurrences and (e)–(h) durations (orange shaded) of each flood type they are associated
with. The different percentiles of flooding occurrence or duration (h) are listed at the bottom of
each column, color coded by flood types. See median values and correlations in Table S4.

• Integrating over the cluster, flood occurrence also increases
with cluster-total PF coverage areas and initial soil wetness,
resulting in greater runoff ratios (Figs. 9 and 10).
• Floods are more likely to occur around the overlapping PF
areas in each MCS cluster, due to the successive rainfall
from multiple MCSs over the overlapping areas and thus a
continuous moistening of the soils, creating a more flood-
prone condition (Fig. 11).
• Terrestrial runoff responses are not only important for
flood occurrence associated with each MCS cluster, but
also to flood durations because MCS clusters producing
greater runoffs can lead to floods with longer durations
(Fig. 10).
In this study we have only examined the relationship between
MCS clusters and floods in terms of the flood occurrence and
durations. This is because other metrics that may better quan-
tify flood severity (e.g., inundation area and depth) are not
available from the NCEI Storm Events Database. However, we
use a high-resolution land surface dataset to account for the
land surface conditions and responses to the different MCS
events. We confirm an important role of initial soil moisture for
flood occurrence related to individual MCSs as well as MCS
1700 JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY
FIG. 11. Boxplots showing (a) the differences between the PF coverage area-averaged and overlapping area-averaged rainfall per area
and surface runoff per area and (b) soil moisture conditions before and after the entire MCS clusters. (c) The inner-cluster changes of soil
moisture states over the overlapping PF areas grouped by the order of occurrence (e.g., first 1/3 indicates MCSs that occur in the earliest
third of the cluster lifetime).
clusters. By incorporating the land surface conditions and exam-
ining the different aspects of PF characteristics of MCSs, we are
able to decompose the different factors contributing to flood oc-
currence and durations. Building upon the close relationship be-
tween flooding and MCSs demonstrated by Hu et al. (2021a),
we further examined the links between floods and MCSs that
are clustered and not clustered. Because clustered MCSs tend
to occur in more favorable meteorological conditions and can
produce substantially more precipitation than individual MCS
events, the link we establish between flooding and MCS clusters
can potentially help improve the prediction of flood occurrence
by improving prediction of clustered MCSs and reduce uncer-
tainty in flooding occurrence in response to a stronger precipita-
tion forcing. This linkage can also allow us to better evaluate
variability of flood likelihood in response to changes in different
aspects (e.g., favorable for clustered/nonclustered MCSs, changes
in terrestrial conditions) with climate change. While recognizing
the importance of initial soil conditions on floods, whether it can
play a role on initiating or maintaining the MCS clusters is an
open question as noted earlier.
While it is true that relaxing the spatial or temporal thresh-
olds to define clustered MCSs tends to shift the peak distribu-
tion of clustered MCSs from early warm-season (April–June)
toward June, we confirm that the above conclusions are not
sensitive to the threshold parameters we use to define MCS
clusters. The effectiveness of clustered MCSs in producing
more floods with longer durations highlights the hydrological
and socioeconomic impacts of clustered MCS events. The im-
plication can be twofold. First, we need a better understand-
ing of the favorable synoptic conditions of MCS clusters (e.g.,
the May 2015 case), their relationships with different climate
modes of variability (e.g., ENSO), and their potential changes
in the future to understand the predictability of clustered
MCSs and to better anticipate variability and changes in flood
risks associated with them. Case studies indicate an important
role of large-scale external factors (e.g., tropospheric anticy-
clone position, Great Plains low-level jet) and internal feed-
backs (Trier et al. 2014). With a consistent strengthening of
the Great Plains low-level jet projected by climate models in
the future (Tang et al. 2017; Torres-Alavez et al. 2021), its im-
plication for possible changes of MCS clusters and their
VOLUME 23
associated flooding risks can be important questions to ex-
plore. Second, MCS clusters producing significant amounts of
rainfall within consecutive days might have a distinctive effect
on water storage in the terrestrial system compared to nonclus-
tered MCSs and non-MCS storms. On one hand, a larger contri-
bution to surface runoff suggests a limited role of rainfall from
clustered MCSs in providing soil moisture and contributing to
ecosystem productivity, which would benefit from intermittent
and moderate rainfall throughout the growing season. On the
other hand, a portion of the rainfall that saturates the soil might
infiltrate to the deeper soil layers due to the higher hydraulic con-
ductivity and stronger vertical water pressure gradient during
flood events. Soil moisture at the deeper layers might contribute
to groundwater storage or moisten the upper layers through hy-
draulic redistribution. The long-term impacts of clustered MCS
events in the water cycle beyond the flooding impacts at short
time scales can be important for seasonal predictions of hydro-
meteorological events and agricultural outcomes.
Acknowledgments. This research is supported by the U.S.
Department of Energy Office of Science Biological and En-
vironmental Research as part of the Regional and Global
Model Analysis and Multi-sector Dynamics program areas.
PNNL is operated for the Department of Energy by Battelle
Memorial Institute under Contract DE-AC05-76RL01830.
Data availability statement. The 4-km hourly MCS data-
base covering 2004–17 is obtained from the U.S. Department
of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement program
(https://doi.org/10.5439/1571643). The NCEI Storm Events
Database is obtained from the NOAA’s National Centers for
Environmental information (ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/
swdi/stormevents/csvfiles/).
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