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Mawsynram
A village in India's Khasi Hills credited with the highest average annual rainfall on Earth
During the monsoon, rain in Mawsynram does not so much fall as roar. This village on a ridge in the Khasi Hills of Meghalaya, in northeastern India, receives close to 12 meters of rain in an average year, about 20 times London's total, and Guinness World Records credits it with the highest average annual rainfall on Earth. Its neighbor Cherrapunji, about 15 kilometers to the east, held that reputation for generations and still holds the world record for the most rain in 12 months. Villagers pad their roofs with thick grass to muffle the noise of downpours, and many work outdoors under the knup, a full-body umbrella woven from bamboo and leaves.
Mawsynram lies at about 1,400 meters in the East Khasi Hills district, on the southern edge of the Meghalaya Plateau, about 45 kilometers southwest of the state capital, Shillong. Just to the south the hills drop steeply to the flat floodplains of Bangladesh. During the southwest monsoon, from about June to September, moist air sweeps north from the Bay of Bengal across those lowlands and is forced sharply upward when it meets the escarpment. As it rises it cools and releases its water, much of it on the slopes around Mawsynram and Cherrapunji. The rain feeds waterfalls, limestone caves such as Mawjymbuin with its stalagmites, and the living root bridges that Khasi villagers train from rubber fig trees to cross swollen streams.
The record books treat the two neighbors carefully. Cherrapunji, also called Sohra, holds the records recognized by the World Meteorological Organization for the greatest rainfall in 12 months, 26,470 millimeters from August 1860 to July 1861, and in 48 hours, 2,493 millimeters in June 1995. Mawsynram is credited by Guinness World Records with the greatest average annual rainfall, about 11,870 millimeters, and India Meteorological Department data put its long-term average above 12,000 millimeters. Because both stations have gaps in their records, rankings shift with the years measured, and Lloró in Colombia reports even higher averages that are not officially recognized. Monsoon tourism now draws visitors, even as the area faces dry-season water shortages, since its thin soils hold little of the rain.