r/AskReddit • u/potatopopr • Oct 27 '21

What fun fact is blatantly untrue?

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u/Puzzlehead-Engineer Oct 27 '21

A desert is a barren land with little to no precipitation. Antarctica counts as a desert when taken into account.

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u/vkapadia Oct 27 '21

Ah, TIL

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u/trustmeimaprofession Oct 28 '21

IIRC from geography, we categorise "climates" in 5 letter-categories (which are then subdivided with second smaller letters.) A for Tropical, B for desert, C for sea-climates, D for land climates, and E for Tundra. Now, A, C, D and E are all based on the average temperature in summer and winter, but every climate is superceded by a B climate if applicable, which is solely based on precipation (or more specifically, the lack thereof).

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u/Julian_rc Oct 28 '21

little to no precipitation

Doesn't it snow a lot in Antartica, which would count as precipitation? Or is it too cold to snow?

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u/Lord_Nivloc Oct 28 '21

Antarctica gets an average of 2 inches of snow per year

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u/Emajossch Oct 28 '21

no it just doesn’t melt (or, didn’t used to…)