8 January—Here’s a Google Earth topographic map of La Réunion, a little volcano-rich French island—technically, an overseas département—in the South Indian Ocean, about 400 miles east of Madagascar. Its 970 square miles—about 100 fewer than Rhode Island’s—hold a population of some 885,000.

Not that it matters, but La Réunion is 200 miles west of even smaller Mauritius, an independent republic perhaps best known as the only recorded habitat of the dodo, a bird now thought to be extinct, but still alive and well in Congress and other legislatures. One-and-a-quarter-million people live in or on its 790 square miles, about 150 thousand more than live in Rhode Island.

In other words, we’re talking about little dots in the middle of bloody nowhere.

La Réunion is of interest at this time because 58 years ago yesterday and today—that’s 7-8 January 1966—the world’s most humongous 24-hour rainfall was recorded on Foc-Foc, on the island less than a mile southeast of Piton de Bert (Bert’s Peak) and about 30 miles due east of the closest city, Le Tampon, with a population of about 80,000.

Now get this: The rainfall on Foc-Foc in 24 hours, resulting from what was the slow—it must have been pretty damn near stationary—passage of Tropical Cyclone Denise, was an incredible 71.8 inches, just a tad less than six feet! In just one day!

The records are accurate. You can always trust French meteorologists.

In the interest of comprehensiveness, the highest known total precipitation of the two wettest tropical cyclones—but not in a single day, mind you—also were recorded on La Réunion, both on Piton de la Fournaise (Furnace Peak), not far from Foc-Foc: Cyclone Gamede, in February 2007, left 217 inches—18 feet—of rain in 10 days and Cyclone Hyacinthe (the wettest tropical cyclone on record), in January 1980, left a whopping great 253.3 inches—21 feet—in 15 days.

Evidently cyclones like to hang around in the middle of nowhere. Mauritius also got walloped, of course. And it’s no surprise that cyclones leave fatalities and lots and lots of rain and wind damage.

For comparison and to bring it home, the highest 24-hour rainfall recorded in Connecticut was 12.77 inches, during Hurricane Diane in August 1955. With the help of Hurricane Connie a week earlier, Diane caused monumentally catastrophic flooding and wind damage that many readers will remember.

Last August’s rainfall that devastated Southbury and Oxford, among other Connecticut towns, was about 15 inches. And the highest rainfall recorded in one year at Bradley Airport was 66.91 inches in 2011. Bradley records an annual average of about 48 inches of rain every year.

And last year, after a little early spring drought, Neptune (or Zeus, if you prefer) overcompensated by inundating Litchfield County with almost five feet of late spring and summer rain . . .