The Wind That

Brings the Rain

In the Indian city of Cherrapunji,

there is a sign saying THE

WETTEST PLACE ON PLANET

EARTH

There are places in the world that think

theyre even wetter but its safe to say that

Cherrapunji is a wet place On average 11

meters of rain fall there every year Thats

enough to give a diplodocus a dunking

Compare it to Chicago where there are

around 90 centimeters of rainfall a year or

even rainy Vancouver which gets roughly

130 centimeters But its not always wet in

Cherrapunji In December and January a

couple of centimeters fall at most while in the

summer it pours and pours The month of July

1861 even made it into the Guinness Book of

Records. A total of 9.3 meters of rain fell—in a

single month.

The big differences in rainfall are because of

the monsoon that blows in India and southeast

Asia The monsoon is a wind that f irst blows

one way for six months and then reverses and

goes the other way This has to do with the

temperature differences between land and

sea When the wind comes off the land the

air is very dry When the wind blows from the

sea it brings a huge amount of water with it

Global warming is making these differences

even larger And the monsoon is becoming

more diff icult to predict Sometimes it can be

very dry and sometimes very wet Sometimes

the monsoon is much too early and sometimes

much too late