Determination of rainfall maxima from long-term series is one of the more important tasks in urban hydrology. These maxima are useful both in designing land drainage systems and for flood protection in a catchment. The identification of rainfall maxima for the hierarchy of rainfall durations from 5 min to 4 320 min is a fundamental stage of the creation of the first version of the Polish Atlas of Rainfall Intensities (PANDa), which will ultimately be a source of updated and reliable information on design rainfall intensities for designing and modeling rainwater drainage and retention systems in Poland. One of the methods for identifying extreme rainfall events is to use criteria for selecting rainfall based on their depth for a given rainfall frequency and duration. Existing national experience in this respect is based on the results of analyses usually conducted with regard to records from single weather stations. This article presents the results of a study designed to verify the usefulness of the literature-based criteria for identifying rainfall maxima using the peaks-over-threshold (POT) method at a much broader nationwide scale. The study analyzed data from a previously created digital database of rainfall series, which includes 3 000 stationyears (consisting of a 30-year measurement series from 100 weather stations of the Institute of Meteorology and the Water Management – National Research Institute (IMGW-PIB). The study results show that as far as the investigated measurement series are concerned, the criteria based on the literature sources have limited application and can only be used for identifying the largest short-duration rainfall events. To determine rainfall maxima for all of the time intervals analyzed (from 5 minutes to 3 days), it was necessary to develop our own criteria that would allow the methodology for identifying extreme rainfall events to be standardized for all 100 stations.