Cecille's Creativity

Atacama is the driest desert. It is hemmed in between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes mountains. The Andes shut out all winds form the east. Like the other hot deserts of the world, the Atacama lies astride one of the Tropics where air pressure is high. The air descends and is therefore warm and dry. There is little cloud, so the sunny days are intensely hot, but the starry nights can be cold.

The Atacama Desert is exceptionally dry, but rainfall is very low in all desert areas. Cairo, in the eastern Sahara, averages 1.12 inches a year. Bahrain, on the edge of the Arabian Desert, has 3.2 inches. But average rainfall figures for deserts can be confusing: there may be heavy storms on a few days in some years, and almost continuous drought in others.

Not all the dry parts of the earth are also hot. Large areas of Central Asia are sheltered by mountains from any rain-bearing winds. Yet deserts such as the Gobi are very cold in winter. The Polar lands are also very dry - although the moisture that does fall accumulates as snow.