Perched on the edge of a ridge in the southern slopes of Meghalaya's East Khasi Hills district, the tiny town of Mawsynran has received record highest rainfall in a single day with a little over 745 mm or nearly 30 inches of rainfall.
With over 745 mm of rains yesterday, the town has received over 1500 mm of rainfall within the last three days. Shops, business establishments remained closed and few cars plied on the road in view of the incessant rains.
"Mawsynram received 745.2 mm of rainfall on August 19 and this could be the highest rainfall received by the town and its nearby areas till date," an official data collector of the IMD here told PTI.
The official said that the record is almost twice as that of what Sohra (erstwhile Cherrapunji) received on the same day.
"Sohra received 471.7 mm of rainfall yesterday, the highest in the last 10 years. In August 2005 it received 407.7 mm of rainfall," head of the meteorology office at Sohra, Vijay Kumar Singh, said.
Both Mawsynram and Sohra towns have received bountiful rainfall this year breaking their own records for several years.
In June, Mawsynram received 4781.2 mm and Sohra received 4355.5 mm of rainfall, both record breaking since 1995.
The onslaught of heavy rainfall in Meghalaya, Assam and the foothills of Himalayas is due to the Monsoon trough, IMD officials in Guwahati said.
The IMD has also warned of heavy to very heavy rainfall in both these states prompting the state machinery to put in place flood and landslides warnings till August 23-24.
Mawsynram and Sohra - the two towns already in record books as the rainiest places on earth - receive maximum condensation through the funnel-shaped catchment opening to the south on either side of where they are located. The precipitation occurs at around 4500 feet where both towns are located, the officials said.
The record rainfall in these two neighbouring towns in the same district had many people wondering where all the water goes to.
Water quickly flows down the narrow streets into the streams and to nearby big rivers that flow directly to Bangladesh, they said.
