Same, that really threw me off. Especially since it's so tiny; it's not like the weather has room to be THAT much different from surrounding countries.
Yes but Indonesia is huge and Timor is far from being it's wettest Island. I suppose Indonesia ranks that high because of huge islands with Equatorial Climate characteristics like Sumatra, Borneo, New Guinea and Sulawesi. Timor is in the southern part of the country and like the southern coast of New Guinea and Cape York, it tends to shift to a Tropical Climate with dry and monsoon seasons.
Weather is very dependent on geography (topology and general location), and weather phenomena can be very localized (think mountain valleys). Plenty of difference between the countries in this respect to account for a difference in rainfall.
At first I thought you were asking for countries with places that had the highest totals of precipitation, which is different from countries with the highest average rainfall. I couldn't figure out why the US wasn't appearing, since Kauai and Maui are a couple of the wettest places on earth.
Was really surprised Brazil wasn't number one, or even on the list. What happened to the Amazon rain forest? And what about India with the monsoons? Good quiz though.
Slightly less than 40% of Brazil is covered by the Amazon Rainforest - large portions are tropical or subtropical grasslands. India also has large deserts and semi-arid portions and the monsoon only takes up a part of the year. As a general rule large countries will have a harder time making it onto a list like this, because they tend to encompass a range of climates, both wet and dry. My home of Australia, for example is often thought of in terms of its vast, dry deserts, but it also has wet tropical rainforests (the Daintree, for example) and snowy alpine regions (literally, the Snowy Mountains), and tropical savannas (in Cape York, for example) as well as plenty of dry scherophyll forest (generically, 'the Bush'). Thus smaller nations typically dominate. I'm actually surprised Colombia makes it, because although much of it is in the Amazon basin and the Pacific side of the Andes gets plenty of rain (Quibdo is about the wettest city on Earth), it also has deserts like La Guajira.
It would be good to change the title to something that makes it clear this is precipitation per square kilometer (or whatever the unit is). Otherwise, it is very confusing how countries like Brazil do not appear here.
A good example of perception versus reality. It is very often rainy and cloudy in places like Ireland, Uk and the Netherlands, but the quantity of acual rain is not that bad. Very often it's very light rain compared to the monsoons of the tropics. You'll definitely experience much more lcoudy, dreary and wet weather though, than someone getting 1 hour of downpour and sunshine after. :)
It's a bit weird that Colombia is the wettest, and Guyana and Suriname are on the list, but not Venezuela (which is between them). Maybe the Venezuelan govt is even screwing that up :)
Surprisingly, the rainiest part of Colombia is not the Amazon, although it's very rainy. The rainiest part is in the Pacific Coast, in the Chocó Department it rains almost everyday and in large quantities.
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.PRCP.MM
East Timor is at 150.
https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/AG.LND.PRCP.MM/rankings
UK is #72!