Where the rain is the climate, not the weather
7 of the Rainiest Inhabited Places on Earth
From a Meghalaya village that gets nearly 12 metres of rain a year to a Colombian port where it rains 300 days out of 365.
A handful of places on Earth catch the bulk of the world's rain — they sit where warm, wet air slams into mountains or tropical coastlines. People still live in them. They just own a lot of umbrellas.
Hawaii, United States
Hilo is the wettest city in the United States — about 3,000 mm of rain a year, courtesy of Mauna Kea's slopes.
Alagoas, Brazil · pop. 4,722
Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon, has a daily afternoon rainstorm so consistent that locals just call it 'as 3 horas'.
Davao, Philippines · pop. 4,801
Baguio's mountain location traps every passing typhoon — the city has seen single-day rainfalls of more than a metre.
Sarawak, Malaysia · pop. 349,147
Sarawak's capital averages around 4,000 mm of rain, with afternoon downpours so reliable they double as a clock.
Gandaki, Nepal · pop. 500,000
Pokhara catches the full force of the Annapurna massif's rain shadow flip — one of the wettest cities in South Asia.
Valle del Cauca, Colombia · pop. 365,607
Buenaventura's Pacific coast gets monsoon-level rain practically year-round — over 7,000 mm annually in some weather stations.
Meghalaya, India
Mawsynram, in the Khasi Hills, holds the unofficial title of wettest inhabited place — averaging nearly 12,000 mm of rain a year.
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For entertainment only. Rankings on this page are editorial picks compiled from public sources for fun and discovery — they aren't a scientific measurement. Population figures and place details come from open data; see the linked place pages for sources.