Wettest Place In The World

Mount Waialeale:

Mount Waialeale , elevation 5,148 ft (1,569 m), is the second highest point on the island of Kauaʻi in the Hawaiian Islands. Averaging more than 460 inches (11,680 mm) of rain over the last 32 years, with a record 683 inches (17,340 mm) in 1982, its summit is considered one of the rainiest spots on earth. It has been promoted in tourist literature for many years as the wettest spot, although the 38-year average at Mawsynram, India is 11,873 mm (467.4 inches). However, Mawsynram's rainfall is concentrated in the monsoon season, while the rain at Waialeale is more evenly distributed through the year.

Several factors give the summit of Waialeale more potential to create precipitation than the rest of the island chain:

• Its northern position relative to the main Hawaiian Islands provides more exposure to frontal systems that bring rain during the winter.

• It has a relatively round and regular conical shape, exposing all sides of its peak to winds and the moisture that they carry.

• Its peak lies just below the so-called trade wind inversion layer of 6,000 feet (1,800 m), above which trade-wind-produced clouds cannot rise.

• And most importantly, the steep cliffs cause the moisture-laden air to rise rapidly - over 3,000 ft in less than half a mile - and drop a large portion of its rain in one spot, as opposed to spreading the rain out over a larger area if the slope were more gradual.

Hawaiian Island:

Islands, once known as the Sandwich Islands, form an archipelago of nineteen islands and atolls, numerous smaller islets, and undersea seamounts trending northwest by southeast in the North Pacific Ocean between latitudes 19° N and 29° N. The archipelago takes its name from the largest island in the group and extends some 1,500 miles (2,400 km) from the Island of Hawaii in the south to northernmost Kure Atoll. Excluding Midway, which is an unincorporated territory of the United States, the Hawaiian Islands form the U.S. State of Hawaii.

This archipelago represents the exposed peaks of a great undersea mountain range known as the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain, formed by volcanic activity over a hotspot in the earth's mantle. At about 1,860 miles (3,000 km) from the nearest continent, the Hawaiian Island archipelago is the most isolated grouping of islands on Earth.