"It hasn't happened since 1859" has nothing to do with whether it's likely to happen soon. You can get heads 162 times in a row when flipping a coin, it's not likely to happen but it's possible. In this case the chance of it happening is not 50%, so us going ~162 years since the last one isn't that weird. That doesn't mean the chance is 0% - we could lose that coin flip this year.
This is related to Tim's mention of climate change - lately, '100-year' and '10-year' storms are happening more often. It's possible the changes to our climate have turned those 100-year storms into 10-year storms, but we may not know until the observations and climate models catch up.
This is related to Tim's mention of climate change - lately, '100-year' and '10-year' storms are happening more often. It's possible the changes to our climate have turned those 100-year storms into 10-year storms, but we may not know until the observations and climate models catch up.