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If you think living on the edge means extreme skiing or skateboarding, you should try living on the edge of extreme weather!
Imagine experiencing up to 500 inches of rain in one season! That's what you would see if you lived in the wettest place on Earth: Cherrapunji, India. Talk about extremes: Each winter, several months might go by without any rain at all. This strange pattern happens because of monsoons, which are seasonal winds that blow from one direction for approximately six months, bringing pouring rains, and from the opposite direction for the remaining six months, during which little rain falls.
If all of that rain is too much for you, maybe you would like the driest place on Earth, the Atacama Desert, which lies along the Pacific coast of Chile in South America. You may think that deserts are hot, but the Atacama is actually a pretty cold place, with average daily temperatures ranging between 32 and 77 degrees Fahrenheit. Actually, deserts are defined not by heat, but lack of rainfall; and some places in this desert have not had rainfall for over 400 years!
Too dry for you? Unfortunately, the hottest place in the world may not be a good escape. El Azizia, Libya, reached a record temperature of 136 degrees Fahrenheit in 1922. Because of its location near the equator, El Azizia gets extreme heat and little rainfall all year round, and that is what makes it so hot. So if this is your idea of a dream vacation, remember to bring plenty of water!
To escape the heat, you can visit the coldest place on Earth: the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. But beware, because it is so hard to find food or build shelter there, human beings have stayed away for thousands of years. Just imagine trying to live in temperatures 129 degrees Fahrenheit below zero! And you may think of the Antarctic as a place with beautiful snowfall, but there is very little actual rain or snow there. Over the course of a year, the Antarctic is as dry as the Sahara Desert.
So if you are someone who likes to go to extremes, whether running in a marathon, hiking up Mount Everest, or growing 1,000-pound pumpkins, extreme weather might just be for you. Where do you want to go next?
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