Precipitation patterns vary greatly world wide and are influenced by many variables. Many aspects influence the quantity of precipitation in a given location, including topography, proximity to water, latitude, current temperature, wind pattern, etc.
The Mile 50 marker site, positioned on a treacherous mining road in Papua’s fog-covered Central Highlands, is about to challenge two long-reigning Indian champions for the title of wettest location on the earth. After all, records are supposed to be broken.
Over the past five years, Mile 50 has seen a mean of 12,143 millimeters (mm) of rain measured by the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) and mining company Freeport Indonesia.
The lone public toilet on the highway connecting the lowland town of Timika with the Freeport mining town of Tembagapura is positioned at Mile 50, which the corporate refers to on its maps as Tanaga Panamen.
In fact, it also marks the start line of the two,000-meter ascent of the road to Grasberg, an extinct volcano that’s today probably the most profitable and controversial copper and gold mines on the earth.
It rains on average 329 days a 12 months, so there isn’t a likelihood of getting a tan. In Tembagapura area, the utmost annual rainfall was 15,457.3 mm in 1999 and the best monthly rainfall was 2,055.4 mm in August 2017.
Thick fog that settles over the mountains almost every day prevents helicopter flights into town and forces lowland mine staff to walk a three-hour distance on a small dirt road that is commonly the goal of rebel snipers.
Gesang Setyado, an ecologist in Freeport, says the high, steep mountainsides cause a phenomenon called the “orographic effect,” during which rain clouds moving across the coastal plain and flowing in from the ocean are suddenly pulled upwards.
Papua has never made the list of the ten wettest places on the earth, but in 2014 the statistics website IndexMundi placed Indonesia ninth amongst 186 countries with the best annual rainfall, just behind Malaysia and Brunei.
Even the 24-hour Wall St website, which relies on information from the Global Historical Climatology Network, a project of the U.S. Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), omitted Papua when listing the supposedly 50 rainiest places on the planet.
The second wettest place on Earth is Mawsynram, which is positioned within the Indian state of Meghalaya. It receives 11,871 millimeters of rain yearly. The harsh geography of the realm forces warm, moist monsoon winds from the Bay of Bengal to build up around Mawsynram.
Source: World Atlas, Asia Times
