Martha Hunter, age 13, of St. Louis, Missouri, for her question:

What part of the United States has no rainfall?
There is no such place in the United States or, for that matter, in the whole world. Here and there a few very arid deserts may get no rainfall for a whole year, or maybe no more than one sprinkling shower. But next year or the year after, they can expect a dousing of several inches. The driest of our states is Nevada. Its average rainfall is 8.8 inches a year. Some years it gets more rain than others. And, as in all cases, meteorologists count the moisture of fallen snow and other forms of precipi¬tation as rainfall. After all, everything that falls from the clouds is wet, even if it takes some time to melt.
One of the driest small areas of.the United States is Death Valley. In summer this low lying desert is also one of our hottest spots. Here the average rainfall is about two inches a year. Usually most of it arrives all at once in a deluging shower and sometimes no rain falls for a whole year or more. But sooner or later, like every other spot on the globe, there is certain to be a shower.