Before I get into the top 5 driest and wettest U.S. major cities, here’s a brief idea of how I collected the data. First, the cities must have a population size of 100,000 or more. Second, populations are not added for a site that has multiple city names. For example, Seattle-Tacoma just goes as Seattle for this list, and just uses the Seattle population to determine if it is a major city. Also, the city must have an official National Weather Service reporting site. Finally, if a city has multiple NWS sites, I use the one that seems to be the most official, usually the one that is listed first on the NWS observed weather reports pages. If you have any questions/comments about my method, feel free to leave a comment on this post.
Now for the lists. Data is from November 7th.
| Driest Major U.S. Cities | ||
|---|---|---|
| Rank | City | Precipitation |
| 1 | Las Vegas, NV | 4.12 |
| 2 | Honolulu, HI | 5.26 |
| 3 | Bakersfield, CA | 5.84 |
| 4 | El Paso, TX | 6.51 |
| 5 | Palmdale, CA | 7.31 |
| Wettest Major U.S. Cities | ||
|---|---|---|
| Rank | City | Precipitation |
| 1 | San Juan, PR | 78.67 |
| 2 | Miami, FL | 63.76 |
| 3 | Fort Lauderdale, FL | 58.27 |
| 4 | Wilmington, NC | 54.39 |
| 5 | Mobile, AL | 54.31 |
I’ll try to get updates going each week depending on how the statistics change.
Have a great week everyone!
I would like to know where Malibu california ranks on the driest U.S. cities? At one time I heard that it rains on average of one day out of the year!!!
Thank you,
Rodney!
Hi Rodney, When I get a chance I’ll see if I can find some info on that. If I don’t post something then ask again to remind me.