– how can a place be constantly extremely rainy? Eg Maui is said to be one of the wettest places on earth where it rains constantly. What is the explanation behind this? Why would one place be constantly rainy as opposed to another place?
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The rain follows the forest is a Hawaiian proverb. (Ha hai no ka ua ika ulu la au) Maui is pretty heavily forested.
The basics of the water cycle is the sun evaporates water, water goes up, water collects together into a cloud,the get blown around and collect more water, and when it gets too heavy it rains.
But plants also help here. They act like massive straws. Leaves have a decent amount of surface area. The leaves collect sunshine and evaporate water, this creates a negative pressure that allows the tree to suck water from it’s roots and back to the leaves.
When you get enough trees together, this creates a feedback loop. When an area is heavily forested, there is a tonne of water going into the air at any given time. Remember the water cycle? Near forests you skip a step. When the cloud gets too heavy it rains. But Forests throw so much water into the air that the clouds don’t have a chance to get blown away. They form and rain in basically the same spot. This means there’s more water on the ground for the trees to suck up and throw into the air, which makes clouds quickly, and so on.
There are other factors that can have the same effect. Anything that can push moisture into the air to make clouds heavy at a given spot will make them rain. Like mountains. Wind pushes water-heavy air around, when it hits a mountain. It goes up and forms a cloud heavy enough to rain.
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