Driest place

For the period between 1964 and 2001, the average annual rainfall for the meteorological station in Quillagua – a town in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile – was just 0.5 millimetres (0.002 inches). This discovery was made during the making of the documentary series Going to Extremes, by Keo Films in 2001.

The weather station is located at Lat 21° 38'S, Long 69° 33'W, Elevation 802 m

The longest sustained dry period is a record held by the town of Arica, also located in the Chilean Atacama; it went 172 months without rain between October 1903 and January 1918, according to measurements from a local weather station, as verified by the World Meteorological Organization.