The daily rainfall data for the twentieth century, from three stations across the region, constitute the basis for statistical analysis. However, the low signal-to-noise ratio makes it difficult to find any significant departure from the simplest null hypothesis of the stability of the rain record at individual stations in northeast India. Only the coarsest possible view, i.e. comparing the two halves of the century, provided strongly significant results in the numbers of days with extreme rain. Using a more general approach, the number of Fourier transform extreme amplitudes also differed significantly. Increasingly heavy events during the summer monsoon season, and partly in the pre- and post-monsoon seasons, are offset by a weakening in the winter monsoon season, so that the annual mean rainfall does not show a significant trend over the Meghalaya Hills. Apart from a greater number of years with noticeable extreme rainfall events in the second half of the twentieth century, we can also observe a more pronounced quasi-periodicity of 10–20 and 30–60 days during the same period. The detection of the latter periodicity indicates that the Madden–Julian oscillation plays an important role in the formation of extreme rainfall events over the Meghalaya Hills during extreme monsoon years.