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Got a question? Ever wondered about something related to geography? Then ask away here. Every two weeks, Joe Blanton, director of our Research Correspondence division, will post answers to three of the most interesting questions received via e-mail. Unfortunately time constraints preclude individual e-mail responses.

Spin cycles...

Does water really go down the drain one way in the Northern Hemisphere and the other way in the Southern?

This is one of those notions that is part legend and part reality. If all other factors were nullified, the force produced by the earth’s spin—the Coriolis effect—might come into play and make water spiral counterclockwise north of the Equator and the other way down under. But, in fact, the impact of the earth’s Coriolis effect is extremely weak on small systems such as basins of water and is easily overridden by almost any other force or circumstance. In the case of water swirling down a drain, the shape of the basin, the direction from which the water enters the basin, and any extraneous movement of the water or basin all outweigh the Coriolis effect in determining how the water spins.

A chemist in Arizona has created a Web site on this very topic. He’s compiling statistics from around the world in an effort to get to the bottom of this thing once and for all. You can even report the spin direction of water going down your own drain. Check it out!

I am a fourth-grade teacher in Louisiana. My class has a question about the international date line. They wanted to know why the prime meridian is a straight line around the globe, while the date line is crooked around Alaska and Russia. Thank you!

Meridians, the imaginary lines that run north-south on the globe, were created by geographers as a convenient way to denote locations and to plot distances. In order to serve that purpose, they must be straight lines that do not deviate. The date line, on the other hand, was devised to help us keep track of time on our planet. As your students have probably learned, one side of the line is a day ahead of the other side. Although the date line largely follows the 180th meridian, it does, as you note, meander here and there. This reflects political boundaries. Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, for example, extend beyond the 180th meridian and could thus wind up a day ahead of the rest of the state. Instead, the jagged path of the date line allows people in the same place to share the same day.

What area of the contiguous U.S. has the highest annual rainfall?

According to the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina, the wettest spot of all is Quillayute on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. In an average year, Quillayute gets 209 days of rain—adding up to 105.18 inches (267.16 centimeters) in all.

Washington isn’t the dampest state, however. That honor goes to Louisiana, which gets an average of 56 inches (142.24 centimeters) of rain a year.

Both places pale in comparison to Mawsynram in India, the “wettest place in the world.” Each year, an average of 467.50 inches (1,187.50 centimeters) of water gets dumped on Mawsynram. Now that’s rain!