The book of Genesis floats (pardon the pun) some interesting numbers when discus

Question

The book of Genesis floats (pardon the pun) some interesting numbers when discussing the Great Flood. For example, it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, and at the end of that time, the entire planet was covered in water.

I think we can deduce how much water that would have had to be, estimating that the highest peaks in the Himalayas were covered with water. (8,848 meters above sea level)

My questions are, how fast would the rain have had to come to raise the ocean level that high in 40 days and nights, how much would the mass of the earth have changed for this event, and would that significantly alter the strength of gravity on earth?

Explanation / Answer

A typical tropical storm drops about 40inches/rain in 24hours (sorry for the medieval units!)

So 40days/nights = 1600inches, or 40metres of water. If you want to cover even reasonable mountains you have to rain a lot harder than that = 200x harder.

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