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Precipitation prediction is central in hydrology and water resources planning and management. This paper introduces a semi-empirical predictive model to predict monthly precipitation and compares its predictive skill with those of machine learning (ML) methods. The stochastic method presented herein estimates monthly precipitation with one-step-ahead prediction properties. The ML predictive skill of the algorithms is evaluated by predicting monthly precipitation relying on the statistical association between precipitation and environmental and topographic factors. The semi-empirical predictive model features non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) for investigating the influence of multiple predictor variables on precipitation. The semi-empirical predictive model's parameters are optimized with the hybrid genetic algorithm (GA) and Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm (LM), or GALMA, yielding a validated model with high predictive skill. The methodologies are illustrated with data from Hubei Province, China, which comprise 27 meteorological station datasets from 1988–2017. The empirical results provide valuable insights for developing semi-empirical rainfall prediction models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]