Highest Rainfall in Twenty-Four Hours

Abstract

WITH reference to the paragraph quoted in your notes of this week's NATURE from the Indian Planters' Gazette of Jan. 28, 1893, the most elementary knowledge of Indian meteorology would suffice to show that the remarkable figure, 48 inches, supposed to represent the fall of a single night in January at Dehra Dun, is simply a misprint for 4˙8. The entire rainfall of the winter season in no part of India exceeds one-half this amount, and I have no hesitation in declaring such a figure as 48 inches in twenty-four hours to be absolutely without precedent, and, in my opinion, so extraordinary at such a season, that, if it really were 48, it would require us to regard all existing Indian meteorological data with suspicion. Thirty inches in twenty-four hours has often been recorded at Chirapunji in June and July. Can any one show a single instance of even 20 inches in twenty-four hours at Dehra Dun?