Rainfall

Rainfall is a liquid form of precipitation. Solid forms of precipitation include snowflakes and hailstones. As shown in the water cycle, when excessive amount of water has condensed in the cloud, the water droplets in the clouds become too big and too heavy for the air to hold them and they drop down to Earth as rain.

In Liberia the climate is tropical, hot and humid. Most of Liberia has one rainfall season between May and November.  This rainfall season is largely controlled by the movement of the tropical rain belt which moves between the northern and southern tropics of Africa over the course of a year. The annual amount of rainfall decreases sharply from the coast toward interior. The average rainfall ranges more than 4500 mm along the coast to about 2000 mm in the interior. In the wet season, the West African Monsoon causes exceptionally high rainfalls on the coastline of West Africa. The capital of Liberia Monrovia is one of wettest capital cities of the world with the average annual precipitation exceeding 5000 mm.

Precipitation supplies fresh water to the Earth, but in Liberia the excessive rain may cause a range of problems.  The Liberia capital city Monrovia and other locations in the country experience frequent flooding issues – flood water enter houses, wells overflow with the polluted water and roads get impassable.