The Rainiest Cities in America
The rainiest cities in America are on the Gulf Coast and in Florida — Pensacola, Miami, Mobile and New Orleans all average roughly 67–73 inches of rain a year. Seattle, the city everyone assumes wins, gets barely 40. We ranked them from 139 million NOAA daily records — and the gap between “rainy” and “wet” is the whole story.
Ask anyone which US city gets the most rain and they'll say Seattle. They're wrong, and it isn't close. Seattle averages about 40 inches of rain a year — less than Atlanta, Houston, or New York. The genuinely rainiest cities sit on the Gulf Coast, where warm water feeds thunderstorms that drop more rain in a single July afternoon than Seattle sees in two soggy weeks.
We computed each city's average annual rainfall straight from NOAA station records, averaged over 2015–2024. Below: the wettest big cities by total inches, the true extremes that dwarf them, and the numbers that finally settle the Seattle argument.
The Rainiest Major US Cities
Ranked by total annual rainfall over the last ten years (2015–2024) in our NOAA data. The Gulf Coast and Florida own the entire leaderboard.
| City | Avg rain / yr | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Pensacola, FL | 73" | Gulf Coast panhandle — frequent tropical moisture on top of daily summer storms. |
| Miami, FL | 71" | A true wet season (May–Oct) of near-daily afternoon deluges, plus tropical systems. |
| Baton Rouge, LA | 69" | Deep Gulf moisture funneled up the Mississippi. |
| Mobile, AL | 68" | Often cited as America’s rainiest major city — thunderstorms almost every summer day. |
| New Orleans, LA | 68" | Gulf convection and a long, wet warm season. |
| Lake Charles, LA | 64" | Southwest Louisiana, squarely in the Gulf storm track. |
| Memphis, TN | 61" | Mid-South storms year-round, from winter fronts to summer thunder. |
| Birmingham, AL | 59" | Central Alabama catches both Gulf moisture and frontal rain. |
| Tallahassee, FL | 58" | North Florida — one of the most lightning-prone spots in the country. |
| Tampa, FL | 56" | Sea-breeze thunderstorms collide over the peninsula almost daily in summer. |
| Nashville, TN | 53" | Wet across all four seasons, with big frontal rain events. |
Figures are 2015–2024 averages and run slightly above the older 1991–2020 NOAA normals (Mobile's normal is 66.3″) — the past decade has been a wet one along the Gulf. Explore any city's full history on our New Orleans, Miami and Mobile pages.
The Seattle Myth: Rainy Isn't the Same as Wet
Here's the reframe that trips everyone up. There are two completely different questions hiding inside “rainiest”: how much rain falls, and how often it rains. Seattle wins the second and loses the first — badly. And our station data shows exactly how badly.
| City | Rain / yr | Rainy days | Days with 1″+ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seattle, WA | 40″ | 155 | 6 |
| Portland, OR | 37″ | 150 | 5 |
| Miami, FL | 71″ | 150 | 20 |
| New Orleans, LA | 68″ | 120 | 23 |
Read that table twice. Seattle rains on more days (155) than New Orleans (120) — yet New Orleans collects 68 inches to Seattle's 40. The reason is in the last column: New Orleans gets 23 days a year with an inch or more of rain; Seattle gets six. Pacific Northwest rain is a constant grey drizzle. Gulf Coast rain is a wall of water that shows up, dumps two inches, and leaves. Frequent and light versus rare and torrential — that's the whole difference, and it's why the reputation and the record books disagree.
The True Extremes
No mainland city approaches the wettest places in the country. Hilo, Hawaii is the rainiest US city, averaging about 126 inches — over ten feet — a year; in our data its gauges log rain on roughly 275 days annually, three days out of every four. On the mainland, the Olympic Peninsula rainforest around Forks and Quillayute, Washington tops 100 inches, soaked by Pacific storms forced up over the mountains.
And the ceiling is almost unimaginable: Mount Waiʻaleʻale on Kauai averages around 450 inches a year, making it one of the wettest spots on the entire planet — the same orographic mechanism as the Olympics, turned up to its Hawaiian maximum.
The Rainiest States
Zoom out to whole states and the same region wins. Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida lead the country by statewide average rainfall — the humid, storm-prone Gulf South and the tropical Pacific. We break down the full list, with the numbers, in the rainiest states in America.
Why the Gulf Coast Wins
The rainiest cities almost all share one ingredient: a warm ocean upwind. The Gulf of Mexico is a bathtub of moisture, and through the long Southern summer that moisture boils up into daily thunderstorms that can drop one to three inches in an hour. Add the occasional tropical system — a single storm can deliver a foot of rain — and totals pile up fast. It's the same reason these cities also feature in the worst floods in US history. The Pacific Northwest, by contrast, gets steady, gentle rain from cool marine air — lots of hours of it, but rarely a downpour.
How We Computed This
City figures come from NOAA GHCN-Daily records in our database, using the primary long-record airport station for each city. Daily precipitation (stored in tenths of a millimetre) was converted to inches, summed by year, and averaged across 2015–2024. “Rainy days” are days with at least 0.01″ of rain; “days with 1″+” are days with an inch or more. We validated the method against published NOAA normals (Mobile 66.3″, Seattle 37.5″) before ranking. Extreme-site figures for Hilo, the Olympic Peninsula and Mount Waiʻaleʻale are from NOAA and are cited inline.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the rainiest city in America?
Among major cities, the Gulf Coast and Florida win — Pensacola, Miami, Mobile and New Orleans all average 67–73 inches a year. The rainiest city of any size is Hilo, Hawaii, at about 126 inches.
Does it rain the most in Seattle?
No. Seattle averages only ~40 inches a year. It has many rainy days (about 155) but light ones — it rains often, not much. Gulf cities get far more total rain.
What is the wettest place in the US?
Mount Waiʻaleʻale on Kauai, Hawaii, at around 450 inches a year — one of the wettest spots on Earth. Hilo is the rainiest city; the Olympic Peninsula is the wettest mainland spot.
Is Seattle or New Orleans rainier?
New Orleans, by total rain (68″ vs 40″). Seattle has more rainy days, but New Orleans gets 23 days a year with 1″+ of rain to Seattle's six.
Keep Exploring
Compare the rest of the extremes: the rainiest states, the snowiest cities, the coldest cities, and the worst floods in US history. Or look up historical rainfall for any US city and date with our lookup tool.
Sources & Method
City averages and rainy-day counts: NOAA GHCN-Daily via our database (2015–2024). Long-term normals from NOAA NCEI. Hilo (~126″), the Olympic Peninsula rainforest, and the ~450″ average at Mount Waiʻaleʻale on Kauai are long-term NOAA/NWS figures. Recent-decade averages run modestly above the 1991–2020 normals along the Gulf Coast.