"Expert" predictions, especially those associated with climate change, fail more often than not.
The climate change consensus has long been predicting that global warming will bring more flooding to river regions.
"...freshwater flooding is "the most impacting natural disaster in terms of number of people affected and economic damages," adding that "some studies in the literature (e.g. IPCC, 2013; Stern Review, 2007) seem to indicate that flood damages are expected to increase in the near future as a consequence of a global climate change," citing the additional studies of Hall et al. (2005) and de Moel et al. (2011)."
So, several scientists decided to actually analyse the available climate data for the Po River region of Italy to determine if the IPCC and other predictors had any merit.
As always, they found the predictions counter to reality:
"...analyses revealed there was a significant increase in residential growth in and around the Po river, particularly near levees and dykes, which increased the exposure of persons and property to flood risk over the period of study. However, meteorologically speaking, Domeneghetti et al. report flood events have not increased. "Consistent with previous analyses (see e.g. Montanari, 2012; Zanchettini et al., 2008)," they write, "our trend detection analysis, which we carried out on long historical series observed for the Po river, does not detect any evidence of a statistically significant change in the flood hazard along the Po river and supports the stationarity of the hydrological series during the period of interest (i.e., last five decades)."
Additional extreme-weather and failed-prediction articles.
Note: Po River image source