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The widely held theory of "Snowball Earth" which entirely covered the planet some 600-700 million years indicates that there is no place on the planet that at one time or another has not been covered in snow or ice. It is possible for it to snow at tropical locals with sufficient altitude, examples being Kilimanjaro, Mauna Kea and the Andes Mountains. With the advent of the most recent global warming phase many of these unique locations are seeing snowfall at an ever decreasing rate. The glaciers on Kilimanjaro for example are retreating to quickly that they are expected to be entirely gone in our generation. Rephrased, where on earth has it gone the longest without snow? Most likely the Atacama desert as it is believed by experts to be the oldest, driest desert on earth with an estimated age of 20 million years. Even though some areas average 1millimeter of precipitation annually there are existing weather stations that have never received any rain/snow whatsoever. At one location it has been estimated that no moisture had fallen from the period 1570-1971. There are mountains in the desert that reach up to 6,885 metres or 22,590 feet in altitude that evidence suggest have been completely free of glaciers for as long as 2.5 million years not for lack of cold rather lack of precipitation. Therefore one could say with a significant degree of confidence that the one area on earth that has gone the longest without receiving any snow would be the lower elevations of the Atacama Desert in Chile, South America. Global warming may well be reducing the number of sites where snow is possible but with a head start of several million years the sterile plains of the Atacama are difficult to if not impossible at this time/era to beat. Even the low altitude islands and coral atolls of the Pacific due to their relatively young geologic age cannot beat out the Atacama when it comes to greatest breadth of time without snow.

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15y ago

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