Driest Places on Earth

The oasis city of Tabuk is located in northwestern Saudi Arabia, slightly less than 300 miles from the Red Sea. It’s extremely hot, with highs reaching above 90 °F over nearly half the year.

The arid city of Copiapó in Chile is located at the southern boundary of the Atacama Desert, about 35 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean. Though rain is rare, the occasional El niño-produced rains are followed by a field of wildflowers in northern Copiapó’s desert setting.

Illizi is another exceedingly dry town found in the Sahara — the second largest desert on Earth after Antarctica. It has a hot desert climate, with long and oppressive summers and short, warm winters. The summers are the driest time of year, with nearly no rainfall.

Concordia research station in Antarctica is extremely isolated and generally populated by fewer than 100 European researchers. The sun never fully sets during summer, and it doesn’t rise for months during the winter. The station is located in the world’s largest desert, where temperatures have been recorded at -112 ºF.

The Algerian desert city Ouargla may have reached a record-smashing (for Africa) temperature of 124.3 ºF in July, 2018, according to an unconfirmed report published in the Washington Post. The Saharan location is historically dry as well, with one report from 1893 claiming that the city had not had rain for two years.