29 Geographical Superlatives That Will Change How You See the World

We’re about to dive into the deepest caves, scale the tallest peaks, and try to keep our footing against the blusteriest winds on the planet as we run down some impressive geographical superlatives in this list, adapted from an episode of The List Show on YouTube.

1. The World’s Highest Point
2. The World’s Tallest Mountain
3. The World’s Lowest Point on Dry Land
4. The World’s Lowest Point Not Covered by Liquid Water
5. The World’s Deepest Point, Period
6. The World’s Deepest Lake
7. The World’s Biggest Lake
8. The World’s Deepest Underwater Cave System
9. The World’s Deepest Cave, Period
10. The World’s Deepest Man-Made Hole
11. The World’s Longest River
12. The World’s Longest Mountain Range, Period
13. The World’s Longest Mountain Range on Land
14. The World’s Tallest Mountain Outside Asia
15. The Farthest Point From Earth’s Center
16. The Highest Active Volcano Above Sea Level
17. The World’s Largest Fjord System
18. The World’s Coldest Uninhabited Place
19. The World’s Coldest Permanently Inhabited Place
20. The Place with the World’s Hottest Temperature Ever Recorded
21. The Place with the World’s Hottest Annual Temperature
22. The World’s Driest Place
23. Most Rainfall in a One-Minute Period
24. Most Rain in 12, 24, 72, and 96 Hours
25. Most Rain in a Year Anywhere on Earth
26. The World’s Wettest Place
27. The Place with the World’s Strongest Wind Gust
28. The World’s Most Powerful Tornado Ever Recorded
29. The World’s Longest Tornado Transport

The World’s Highest Point

Mount Everest in the Himalayas is the world’s highest point, with an altitude of 29,035 feet above sea level. That’s like 20 Empire State Buildings stacked on top of one another, including their spires and antennae. Mount Everest is so tall that its summit pokes into the South Asian jet stream, whose winds and flying snow can cancel climbers’ ascents. But, perhaps surprisingly, the height of Mount Everest is changing. Is its place in the record books at risk?

When surveyors first measured Mount Everest in 1850, its elevation was calculated to 29,002 feet [PDF]; it was re-measured in 1955 at 29,029 feet, and the most recent survey in 2020 came up with 29,035 feet. Like other mountains around the world, Everest’s elevation shifts due to plate tectonics and earthquakes. But even if it gains or loses a yard or two, Everest is not in danger of relinquishing its claim to fame. The second highest point on Earth, the summit of K2 in the Karakoram range between Pakistan and China, is only 28,251 feet above sea level.

The World’s Tallest Mountain

That’s not to say that Mount Everest is the tallest mountain on Earth. That honor belongs to Mauna Kea in Hawaii, which is not really a mountain so much as a colossal dormant volcano. It rises 13,803 feet above sea level, which, you may be thinking, is less than half the elevation of Mount Everest. But 70 percent of Mauna Kea is underwater. When factoring in its height from the seabed to the ocean’s surface, which is about 19,700 feet, the volcano’s total height equals 33,503 feet. That’s more than 6.3 miles from bottom to top. In fact, the largest mountains on the planet are the shield volcanoes that created the islands of Hawaii. 

The World’s Lowest Point on Dry Land

Now let’s come back down to earth. Really far down—to its lowest points. The shore of the Dead Sea, between Israel, Jordan, and the West Bank, is the lowest point on dry land at 1400 feet below sea level. The Dead Sea itself is another 1003 feet deep. 

The World’s Lowest Point Not Covered by Liquid Water

But that’s nothing compared to the lowest natural point on Earth not covered by liquid water. In 2019, scientists mapping the bedrock underneath Antarctica’s ice sheet located its deepest point in a canyon under the Denman Glacier, coming in at 11,500 feet below sea level. That’s just a tad shallower than two Grand Canyons stacked on top of each other.

The World’s Deepest Point, Period

How low can we go? If we’re talking about undersea superlatives, we can go much, much lower. The deepest point on the entire planet is in the western Pacific Ocean at the southern end of the Mariana Trench, which is itself a canyon in the seafloor. This spot, named Challenger Deep after the British Royal Navy ship that discovered it in 1875, is 35,876 feet below sea level. That’s equivalent to 13 Burj Khalifas. That is so incredibly deep that the place was first explored almost a century later in 1960, and just 27 people have dived to its bottom since then, one of whom was Titanic director and deep-sea enthusiast James Cameron. 

The World’s Deepest Lake

The deepest lake on Earth is so isolated that a unique ecosystem and animal species have evolved in and around it over the past few million years. Lake Baikal in Siberia lies on a continental rift—a place where two tectonic plates meet. Over time, the plates have pulled away from each other and water has filled the gap, forming the world’s deepest lake at approximately 5500 feet deep. It’s also the world’s oldest lake at about 25 million years old, and holds 20 percent of all the fresh surface water on Earth. Baikal seals—the only seal species to live exclusively in fresh water—swim in its depths along with an exceptional number of plants and animals found nowhere else. Lake Baikal is pretty great—even greater than the Great Lakes, whose total water volume could fit inside it.

The World’s Biggest Lake

But the world’s biggest lake by surface area and volume? That’s the Caspian Sea, a landlocked saline lake in western Asia. It formed from the remnants of the ancient Paratethys Sea, which stretched from modern-day Central Europe to Central Asia, when it was cut off from larger oceans by the shifting of, you guessed it, tectonic plates. Today, the Caspian Sea covers more than 144,000 square miles—roughly the size of Montana—and contains 18,761 cubic miles of water [PDF].

The World’s Deepest Underwater Cave System

People often dive into the Hranice Abyss, the world’s deepest underwater cave system, located in the Czech Republic. In 2020, scientists estimated that the cave was up to 1 kilometer (or 3280 feet) deep, which is almost twice as deep as previously thought. Four years earlier, a professional cave diving team had sent an underwater ROV down to 1325 feet, setting a world record, but had been stopped from further progress because they ran out of fiber-optic cable.

The World’s Deepest Cave, Period

The deepest cave on Earth, though, is Veryovkina in Abkhazia, a region sandwiched between Georgia, Russia, and the Black Sea. In 2018, after numerous expeditions over several decades, a team of spelunkers rapelled 1.3 miles down to the bottom. Like the Hranice system, Veryovkina is carved in karst, a type of formation mostly made of limestone that is easily worn away by water. The hydrological activity leaves behind sinkholes, springs, and long, twisting caves. 

The World’s Deepest Man-Made Hole

We can’t move on to the next natural wonder without mentioning a key human-made superlative. In 1970, Soviet geologists began digging a hole into the frozen tundra near Murmansk in the Russian Arctic. Over the next 25 years, they continued drilling through never-before-seen layers of Earth’s crust in an effort to understand its makeup, eventually reaching a record depth of 40,230 feet before funding ran out. Ownership of the Kola Superdeep Borehole SG-3, as it’s known, changed hands a few times until the site was abandoned in 2008. But don’t worry—any hapless explorer who comes upon it won’t fall in. Though it’s still the world’s deepest man-made hole at 7.6 miles below the surface of the Earth, it’s only 9 inches in diameter.

The World’s Longest River

Which river holds the title of the world’s longest is surprisingly controversial. The two top contenders have always been the Nile and the Amazon, but as scientists have learned more about their geography and refined their measurement methods, the crown has been passed from one river to the other more than once. The United States Geological Survey and Guinness World Records, maintain that the Nile is the world’s longest river at 4132 miles and 4160 miles, respectively, edging out the 4000-mile Amazon. However, researchers in Brazil—where the Amazon’s size is a point of national pride—claim that the Amazon is actually 4331 miles long and the Nile a mere 4258. Will the rivalry ever be settled? Maybe. It was announced in 2023 that an expedition to map the entire length of the Amazon by kayak was being planned, so we may get an answer.

The World’s Longest Mountain Range, Period

The world’s longest mountain range, period, is the Mid-Ocean Ridge—which snakes through every ocean for a total of 40,389 miles.

The World’s Longest Mountain Range on Land

The Andes are the world’s longest mountain range on land. The Andes span 5500 miles and stretch from Tierra del Fuego at the southernmost point of South America up the Pacific Coast to Venezuela on the Caribbean Sea. 

The World’s Tallest Mountain Outside Asia

The Andes range is second only to the Himalaya in height, and several Andean mountains are also superlatives: Aconcagua in Argentina is the world’s tallest mountain outside Asia at 22,837 feet ...

The Farthest Point From Earth’s Center

… the summit of Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador is the farthest point from Earth’s center, thanks to Earth’s bulging shape at the equator (which is a result of centrifugal force created by its rotation) … 

The Highest Active Volcano Above Sea Level

… and the highest active volcano above sea level on the planet is Nevados Ojos del Salado, on the border of Chile and Argentina.

The World’s Largest Fjord System

You’ll find numerous fjords, which are long, deep, steep-sided inlets carved by glaciers, where the Andes meet the Pacific Ocean—but the world’s longest fjord system is actually in Greenland. Scoresby Sound on its east coast is 18 miles wide at its mouth, then penetrates 70 miles inland before branching into two smaller waterways, whose glacial tributaries extend another 115 miles to the Greenland ice sheet itself. The entire system of rocky shores, towering cliffs, and ice-choked channels covers an area nearly the size of Switzerland.

The World’s Coldest Uninhabited Place

Sure, Greenland is in the Arctic, but it’s not even close to being the coldest point on Earth. For that, we need to head in the other direction—to Antarctica. The lowest temperature ever recorded was observed on July 21, 1983, at the Soviet Union’s Vostok Station, in the dead of austral winter. The snow surface temperature plunged to -128.56°F. In 2018, a study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters reported satellite data from parts of the Eastern Antarctica Plateau that suggested air temperatures could reach as low as -137°F. Antarctica is definitely the coldest uninhabited place on Earth, give or take a few degrees.

The World’s Coldest Permanently Inhabited Place

The residents of Oymyakon in Russia have the distinction of living in the coldest permanently inhabited place on Earth, where the average winter temp plummets to -58°F. That’s several important degrees shy of its official winter temperature record of -89.86°F, observed on February 6, 1933, at the town’s weather station [PDF]. Oymyakon is one of the Northern Hemisphere’s “poles of cold,” where temps regularly hit record-setting frigidity. Others are the town of Verkhoyansk and the city of Yakutsk, located not far from Oymyakon. 

The Place with the World’s Hottest Temperature Ever Recorded

On the other end of the spectrum, the hottest temperature ever recorded was an absolutely scorching 134°F at the aptly named Furnace Creek (which used to be inappropriately titled Greenland Ranch) in California on July 10, 1913. This blistering spot lies 190 feet below sea level and hosts a visitor’s center for Death Valley National Park, so visit at your own risk. 

If you haven’t kept up on your weather world records you might think a much hotter temperature was recorded in what is now Libya in 1922. But a few years ago, a World Meteorological Organization commission decided that record was invalid. Some of the same people think the 1913 Death Valley record is completely bogus as well, though there’s been little desire to put together another commission to investigate, so it remains the official record. But even if that particular record is dubious, Death Valley still probably has the title—just for a different date and temperature.

The Place with the World’s Hottest Annual Temperature

The place with the hottest average annual temperature sounds only mildly cooler. A mining company working in Dallol, Ethiopia, recorded temperature data between 1960 and 1966 that showed an annual average temp of 94°F. Dallol is located in the Danakil Depression, an otherworldly corner of the country where three tectonic plates diverge, bringing live volcanos, sulfur springs, mineral-laden geysers, and vast salt plains to the surface.

The World’s Driest Place

The hottest areas on the planet are also some of the driest, with annual rainfall measured in mere millimeters. The world record for the longest period without precipitation occurred in Arica, Chile, between October 10, 1903, and January 1, 1918. That’s more than 14 years without a drop. Arica also has the lowest annual precipitation on Earth, coming in at an infinitesimal three-hundredths of a millimeter of moisture per year. Even the driest years in Antarctica average more precipitation than that.

Most Rainfall in a One-Minute Period

Meteorologists measure acute rainfall in intervals ranging from one minute to 96 hours, which result in some pretty spectacular precipitation records. The tiny hamlet of Unionville, Maryland, takes the title for the most rainfall in a one-minute period, receiving 1.23 inches on July 4, 1956.

Most Rain in 12, 24, 72, and 96 Hours

Two locales on the Indian Ocean island of La Réunion hold records for the most rain in 12, 24, 72, and 96 hours. Between February 24 and 27, 2007, more than 16 feet of rain fell on one of the island’s volcanic craters.

Most Rain in a Year Anywhere on Earth

Cherrapunji, India, experienced the most rainfall in a year anywhere on Earth: From 1860 to 1861, more than 86 feet of water inundated the town. 

The World’s Wettest Place

But none of these places is technically the world’s wettest spot—that honor goes to Mawsynram, India, only 10 miles away from Cherrapunji as the crow flies. It averages 40 feet of precipitation in any given year.

The Place with the World’s Strongest Wind Gust

The strongest gust of wind ever recorded blew through Barrow Island, Australia, as part of Tropical Cyclone Olivia on April 4, 1996. It clocked 253 miles per hour—more than the maximum gust ever felt on Mount Washington, New Hampshire, which is notorious for being violently windy. 

The World’s Most Powerful Tornado Ever Recorded

When it comes to tornadoes, the superlatives are even more shocking. The wind speed of a May 1999 tornado in central Oklahoma reached a truly incredible 302 miles per hour. The F5 tornado flattened parts of Moore, Bridge Creek, and southern Oklahoma City. 

The World’s Longest Tornado Transport

That storm undoubtedly carried tons of debris far and wide. And, believe it or not, the World Meteorological Organization has a category for that too. The record for the “longest tornado transport,” indicating the greatest distance that a tornado ever carried an object, was set on April 11, 1991. A powerful tornado whisked a personal check 223 miles from Stockton, Kansas, to Winnetoon, Nebraska. No word on whether it ever got cashed.

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