On Aug. 19, 1955, the unimaginable happened.

A downgraded hurricane named Diane blasted the small rural town of Burlington, Conn., with a record 12-plus inches of rain and left 77 people dead statewide. Residents thought they had seen the worst of Mother Nature.

Then came this past Sunday, 69 years later to the day. And this time southwestern Connecticut felt the blow not from a hurricane and its the driving rain and slashing winds but from a storm so strong and so unusual in its ferocity that scientists categorized it as a historic, “1-in-1,000-year storm.” It broke Diane’s rainfall record by several inches.