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Most people assume that rainfall trends move slowly, the kind of shift you’d only notice over a lifetime. Yet a wave of recent climate data tells a different story. In several American cities, the rate at which rain falls during storms has climbed sharply since 1970, and some of the biggest jumps are happening in places nobody would expect, dry plains towns and high desert cities rather than the usual suspects along the Gulf Coast.
Climate Central, working with decades of NOAA weather station records, tracked how hourly rainfall intensity has changed across 144 major U.S. locations. The results reshuffle a lot of assumptions about where extreme rain is becoming a bigger part of daily life. Here are eight cities where that shift has been the most dramatic.
Wichita, Kansas
Wichita tops the list with the steepest rise in hourly rainfall intensity of any city tracked in the analysis. Wichita’s simple hourly rainfall intensity index climbed 38 percent between 1970 and 2024, the largest increase recorded among all stations studied. That is a striking number for a city sitting in the Great Plains, a region better known for drought years than downpours.
The city’s average annual precipitation remains modest by national standards, yet the rain that does fall is arriving in noticeably heavier bursts. This pattern matters because short, intense storms overwhelm drainage systems faster than steady, spread out rain ever would. Wichita’s experience shows that even places without a reputation for wetness can see the character of their storms change dramatically.
Reno, Nevada
Reno might be the least likely name on this list, sitting in the high desert of the Sierra Nevada’s eastern slope. Reno’s hourly rainfall intensity index rose 37 percent from 1970 to 2024, placing it among the fastest changing cities in the entire dataset. Reno averages a little over sixteen inches of precipitation a year, one of the driest totals of any city on this list.
That low baseline makes the shift especially notable. When rain is scarce, a jump in how hard it falls during the storms that do occur can catch residents and infrastructure off guard. Reno’s example fits a broader theme researchers have flagged, that dry western cities are not immune from the intensifying rainfall trend simply because they get less rain overall.
Fairbanks, Alaska
Far from the Lower 48, Fairbanks has quietly become one of the fastest changing rainfall locations in the country. Fairbanks recorded a 37 percent increase in hourly rainfall intensity between 1970 and 2024, tying it with Reno and El Paso for one of the sharpest rises nationally. Interior Alaska has been warming faster than most of the rest of the country, and that extra heat appears to be showing up in how rain falls, not just in melting permafrost or shrinking sea ice.
Alaska as a whole stands out in climate projections for extreme precipitation. Alaska is likely to experience some of the highest levels of extreme precipitation intensification, around 43 percent, at 2 degrees Celsius of global warming. Fairbanks looks like an early example of that broader statewide pattern already playing out.
El Paso, Texas
El Paso sits in the Chihuahuan Desert, a landscape defined by scarce rainfall and long dry stretches. Despite that, El Paso posted a 37 percent increase in hourly rainfall intensity from 1970 through 2024, matching Reno and Fairbanks near the top of the national rankings. The city typically records only a handful of inches of rain in a normal year, which makes any change in storm intensity easy to notice locally.
Border region storms in El Paso often arrive as sudden monsoon bursts during the summer months, and those bursts appear to be growing more intense over time. Flash flooding has become a more frequent concern in a city whose drainage infrastructure was largely built for a drier, gentler rainfall pattern. The numbers suggest that pattern is no longer holding.
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Sioux Falls lands solidly in the upper tier of cities experiencing rapid rainfall intensification. The city’s hourly rainfall intensity index increased 31 percent between 1970 and 2024, placing it among the top handful of stations analyzed nationwide. South Dakota falls within the Northern Rockies and Plains climate region, an area researchers have specifically flagged as one of the fastest changing in the country.
Regional data backs this up. The Northern Rockies and Plains region saw hourly rainfall intensity rise 16 percent on average, but Sioux Falls itself has outpaced that regional average by a wide margin. For a city built around agriculture and a relatively modest annual rainfall total, that faster pace of change carries real practical weight for farmers and city planners alike.
Bismarck, North Dakota
Bismarck rounds out a cluster of Northern Plains cities showing unusually fast rainfall intensification. Bismarck’s hourly rainfall intensity index climbed 30 percent from 1970 to 2024, a substantial shift for a city known more for harsh winters than heavy summer downpours. Like its neighbors in the region, Bismarck’s rainfall total is fairly low, generally hovering around sixteen inches a year.
What stands out is how consistently North Dakota and South Dakota both appear near the top of this ranking. It suggests something structural is happening across the broader Northern Plains, not just a fluke tied to one weather station. Warmer air moving north carries more moisture, and when that moisture is released, it appears to be coming down harder and faster than it used to.
North Platte, Nebraska
North Platte sits quietly in the western Nebraska plains, far from any coastline or major mountain range. Yet North Platte recorded a 28 percent increase in hourly rainfall intensity, based on Climate Central’s earlier multi-year analysis of stations across the country. That places it firmly among the fastest changing rainfall locations in the interior United States.
North Platte’s climate has always leaned dry, with irrigation playing a central role in local agriculture. A rise in how intensely rain falls, even without a major increase in total yearly precipitation, changes the calculus for soil erosion and short term flooding risk. It is a reminder that intensity and total volume are two different measurements, and a city can see one climb sharply while the other stays roughly flat.
Huntington, West Virginia
Huntington stands apart from the other cities on this list because it already receives a fairly substantial amount of rain each year. Huntington’s hourly rainfall intensity rose 28 percent, and the city averages around 41 inches of annual precipitation, making it the only city among the ten highest ranked stations with above average rainfall totals. That combination, already wet and getting more intense, creates a distinct set of challenges.
Nestled along the Ohio River, Huntington sits within a region that climate researchers have repeatedly flagged for rising rainfall intensity. The Ohio Valley climate region saw hourly rainfall intensity increase by 15 percent on average, yet Huntington’s local rate nearly doubles that regional figure. For a river city already prone to flooding, a faster pace of intense rainfall adds pressure to levees and drainage systems built for an earlier climate.
Taken together, these eight cities tell a broader story about how rainfall is changing across the United States. The pattern is not confined to the humid Southeast or the storm prone Gulf Coast, the places most people picture when they think about heavy rain. Instead, some of the fastest rising rainfall intensity trends are showing up in dry plains towns, desert cities, and interior valleys, places whose infrastructure and expectations were built around a gentler climate. Researchers tie the shift to a basic physical fact, warmer air holds more moisture, and that extra moisture tends to be released in shorter, harder bursts rather than steady, predictable rain. For residents and city planners in Wichita, Reno, Fairbanks, El Paso, Sioux Falls, Bismarck, North Platte, and Huntington, that shift is no longer a distant projection. It is already showing up in the storms rolling through their skies.
