Is it possible to have permanent rain?

Question

Let's say there's a land-based location called Verywet on a fictional world. Assuming this fictional world follows the same laws of nature that our own planet does, would it be possible for it to continually rain over Verywet? By continual, I mean that while the intensity of the rain may be lighter or heavier at times, there is never a moment when drops are not falling from the sky.

If it is feasible what sort of environment would be required? Would the rainfall need a lot of water beneath it? Or would it need to be near a coast that brought a constant supply of storms inward?

If it is impossible for an Earth-like world, what would be needed to make it work? Other than magic.

Also related. Neither question uses the [tag:hard-science] tag, though, so that might be enough to differentiate them. — HDE 226868, Mar 04 '16 at 03:32
They actually are quite similar, though I would definitely appreciate a more "hard-science" answer if possible. — , Mar 04 '16 at 03:38
A tidally locked planet orbiting a Red Dwarf star might have permanent rainy zones since the atmosphere will be circulating in fixed cells. — Thucydides, Mar 04 '16 at 17:52

Cort Ammon · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-26T00:35:01.430

Never is a word that is remarkably hard to use with weather. The answer is almost always "no" because there's always a statistical chance of unusual weather occurring. However, for all intents and purposes, there's no reason not to assume a region is arbitrarily rainy. All it needs is to be part of a Coriolis cell which collects a lot of moisture, and then have a giant mountain peak to encourage as much of it to condense as possible.

The Guiness Book of World Records demonstrates that lots of rain does happen:

Most rainy days - world
Mt Wai-`ale-`ale (1569m 5148ft), Kauai, Hawaii has up to 350 rainy days per annum.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 04 '16 at 06:22

Supposedly a Flash Gordon episode said "it rained on planet Mongo." I never checked it, but it sounds good enough that it should be true.

I think you can build a world where one region gets almost constant rain. Shape your continents to create rain shadows in the oceanic climate zone.

Is it possible to have permanent rain?

2 Answers2