Monster Monsoon

welcome to Mawsynram, India! This village sits high in the hills below the Himalaya Mountains. Mawsynram is famous for something: it’s the wettest place on earth! Every year Mawsynram gets over 11, 870 millimeters of rain. That’s enough to fill a rain gauge as tall as a four-story building! Ninety percent of this rain falls from April to September.

What makes Mawsynram get so much rain? An annual wind system called a monsoon. There is a wet monsoon and a dry monsoon. During the wet monsoon, the wind comes from the southwest. It brings water from the ocean. Clouds form and travel with the wind.

But the Himalaya Mountains block the clouds over Mawsynram. So rain falls . . . and falls and falls! So much rain makes Mawsynram green and beautiful. But living in this monster monsoon is not easy! There is frequent flooding and a lot of mud. There is too much water to raise crops. So people must grow and store food during the dry season.

Or they buy food at the market. They must also store wood for fuel. Oh, and the pounding rain makes a lot of noise! People use grass to soundproof their tin roofs. Clouds often drift through houses and everything gets wet! Women weave grass umbrellas so that people can work in the rain.

These umbrellas cover the body―just like a turtle’s shell! Even with those umbrellas, getting around Mawsynram can be tough. Roads wash away. And wooden bridges rot within a few years. So people build “ living” bridges. First they lay bamboo across streams. Then they tie tree roots onto the bamboo.

The roots grow across the stream and into the soil on the other side. The bamboo rots away. But the roots form a living bridge. The oldest living bridge is over five hundred years old! Whew! After so many months of rain, people are ready to dry off. The dry monsoon starts in the autumn. Dry desert air blows in from the northeast.