Probability‐distribution‐curve for flood‐control studies

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Abstract
Since 1896 attempts have been made to apply the statistical method to the occurrence of hydrological phenomena with varying degrees of success. In the “Report of the State Engineer and Surveyor of New York” for 1896, in an article on Hudson River Storage by George W. Rafter (p. 803), dated February 1, 1897, an attempt was made to apply the ordinary Gaussian law of"error to rainfall‐data. It was frankly recognized that the law was imperfect in its application to this type of data because positive and negative errors of equal absolute value were not equally probable, nor in a long series equally frequent (p. 843). At the conclusion of the article, Mr. Rafter stated; “In some future report it is intended to discuss, as the final theoretical question, the method of deducing a formula enabling one to take the rainfall‐ and temperature‐records of a long series of years and deduce therefrom the probable runoffs of a stream…”

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