Driest Inhabited Places on Earth

About This Dataset

This chart ranks some of the driest inhabited places on Earth by their long-term average annual rainfall, in millimetres. These desert towns receive only a few millimetres of rain per year, yet are still home to thousands of people.

✨ AI Insight

These towns receive almost no rain at all: most average under 2.5 mm per year, thousands of times less than the world's wettest places. Arica in Chile, often cited as the driest inhabited place on Earth, averages just 0.76 mm annually, while nearby Antofagasta and Egypt's Luxor are similarly parched at well under 1 mm. Two geographic settings dominate: the Atacama Desert of South America, where a cold ocean current and mountain barriers block virtually all moisture, and the eastern Sahara and Nile Valley (Wadi Halfa, Aswan, Luxor), where subtropical high pressure suppresses rainfall year-round. Survival in these places depends almost entirely on rivers such as the Nile or on piped water rather than local precipitation. The tiny differences between them, fractions of a millimetre, highlight how close to absolute zero rainfall the driest inhabited spots on the planet really are.

Source: Geographical / climate records

Key Findings

Auto-computed highlights from this dataset

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Wadi Halfa (Sudan) leads with 2 in All Time.

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Average value in All Time: 1 · median: 1.

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Gap in All Time: Wadi Halfa (Sudan) is 4.9× larger than Antofagasta (Chile).