How wet is that?
Annual rainfall varies by a factor of ten thousand between the driest and wettest inhabited places.
Almost exactly Manchester
900 mm is wetter than 6 of the 9 references on this page.
Reference figures are measurements and are rounded; the unit conversion behind them is exact.
| Reference | Size | Yours ÷ theirs | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Atacama Desert | 0.5 mm | 1,800× | Some stations have never recorded rain |
| Cairo | 25 mm | 36× | |
| Las Vegas | 110 mm | 8.18× | |
| Los Angeles | 380 mm | 2.37× | |
| London | 620 mm | 1.45× | |
| Manchester | 870 mm | 1.03× | |
| New York | 1,270 mm | 0.709× | |
| Singapore | 2,340 mm | 0.385× | |
| Mawsynram, India | 11,870 mm | 1/13.2 | The wettest inhabited place |
Worth knowing
- London gets 62 cm of rain a year — less than Rome, Sydney or New York. It rains often and lightly, which is a different thing.
- Mawsynram in Meghalaya averages 11.9 m of rain a year, almost all of it in the four monsoon months.
Frequently asked
Is London really rainy?
It rains on about 160 days a year but only 620 mm falls. That is fewer millimetres than Rome and about half of New York; the reputation comes from frequency, not volume.
What is the driest place on Earth?
The Atacama Desert. Some weather stations there have never recorded rainfall, and parts of it are thought to have been hyper-arid for three million years.