12.9 feet of rain in 3 days

While in Thailand we did a day-trip to an elephant farm with a couple from the La Réunion - a remote island off Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.

I saw that a category 4 typhoon - same as a hurricane - was a few hundred miles away, so I wrote and asked him about its effect. A previous storm, Gamede, passed by just close enough that they were in its high winds for 3 days. Gamede cut the island into three. One bridge that's out will take over a year to replace.

And Gamede caused rainfall that broke the world record for rain in a 72-hour period = 12.9 feet, 3.93 meters!! Can you imagine that? The record was high on a mountain, but a village at 3,000 feet also got more rain than the previous record.

I read about this at Weather Underground - Jeff Master's weather blog.