Tall Tales about Tails of Hydrological Distributions. I

This paper and its companion critique the common frequency analysis techniques for hydrological extremes-in particular, the claims that their increasingly refined mathematical structures have increased the accuracy and credibility of the extrapolated upper tails of the fitted distribution models over and above that achieved by the 50-year-old empirical methods. Part 1 compares the common-sense engineering origins of frequency analysis with its present ostensibly "rigorous theory"; some myths advanced under the banner of the latter are analyzed in greater detail in Part 2.