Compared with these places, our climate seems pretty tame
Since I published an article about worldwide extremes, some readers have asked about the wettest and driest places on our planet.
Cherrapunji, located in the Khasi Hills of Assam in northeastern India, holds the official all-time global rainfall record for 12 consecutive months. From August 1860 through July 1861, Cherrapunji measured an amazing 1,041.78 inches of precipitation, nearly 87 feet of rain!
The wettest place in the United States is located along the eastern slopes of Mount Waialeale at 5,075 feet on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. The average annual precipitation on Mount Waialeale during the past 60 years has been 462.47 inches. Pu’u Kukui, on the island of Maui, at 4,125 feet averages 413.61 inches a year and holds the all-time U.S. annual rainfall record of 705.44 inches, set during the El Niño year of 1982. Pu’u Kukui also holds the U.S. record for monthly precipitation, set in March 1942, with 107.34 inches.
Here in the Inland Northwest, the most precipitation the Spokane International Airport recorded for an entire year was 26.07 inches in 1948. Coeur d’Alene measured its all-time high annual precipitation total of 38.77 inches in 1996.
The most arid spot on Earth is Chile’s Atacama Desert, about 18 degrees south of the Equator. Often years pass without any measurable moisture being gauged at a small village called Arica. A neighboring town, Iquique, once went 11.5 years without rain, from November 1945 to May 1957. The normal annual rainfall at Arica is 0.03 inches. Iquique averages 0.07 inches.
The polar regions are likewise extremely dry. The South Pole Station in Antarctica in the past five decades has averaged 0.08 inches of melted snowfall annually. Arctic Bay, located in Canada’s Northwest Territories, averages only 0.09 inches of moisture in a calendar year. The driest year ever there was 1949, with 0.05 inches of precipitation.
The longest rainless stretch on record in the U.S. occurred at Baghdad, Calif., when no measurable rain fell for 767 consecutive days from Oct. 3, 1912, to Nov. 8, 1914, more than two years.
Locally, the driest year on record for both Spokane and Coeur d’Alene was 1929. Only 7.54 inches of precipitation was measured in Spokane compared with the annual normal of 16.67 inches. Coeur d’Alene, much wetter with an average rainfall since 1895 of 26.11 inches, gauged 15.18 inches.