Driest States, Nevada Leads (2026)

Name: Driest cities and states by annual rainfall, The Honest Local
Creator: The Honest Local
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Inches of precipitation a year, from NOAA's 1991-2020 climate normals; driest first.

By The Honest Local · 50 states · every value links to its public source

4.8 inNevada leads with the lowest inches of rain a year of all 50 states

The top five states inches of rain a year

No. 1Nevada4.8 ininches of rain a year
No. 2Arizona8.6 ininches of rain a year
No. 3New Mexico9.3 ininches of rain a year
No. 4Idaho11.3 ininches of rain a year
No. 5Wyoming12.6 ininches of rain a year

Driest States on the map

Driest cities and states by annual rainfall, states hover for the numbers, click for every one

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Inches of precipitation a year, from NOAA's 1991-2020 climate normals; driest first.

Driest States, all 50

The full ranking inches of rain a year

	Place	inches of rain a year
1	Nevada	4.8 in
2	Arizona	8.6 in
3	New Mexico	9.3 in
4	Idaho	11.3 in
5	Wyoming	12.6 in
6	California	13.9 in
7	Montana	14 in
8	Utah	14.8 in
9	Colorado	15.4 in
10	Hawaii	16.4 in
11	Alaska	20.4 in
12	North Dakota	21.6 in
13	South Dakota	24.9 in
14	Nebraska	30.6 in
15	Minnesota	31.2 in
16	Michigan	32 in
17	Illinois	34.4 in
18	Washington	34.4 in
19	Wisconsin	34.5 in
20	Iowa	35.3 in
21	Kansas	36.3 in
22	Oklahoma	37.8 in
23	Vermont	37.9 in
24	Ohio	38.4 in
25	Missouri	40.3 in
26	New Hampshire	41.5 in
27	Texas	42.1 in
28	Indiana	42.7 in
29	Maryland	42.7 in
30	West Virginia	43.8 in
31	Connecticut	44.3 in
32	Massachusetts	44.3 in
33	Pennsylvania	44.5 in
34	North Carolina	44.5 in
35	Delaware	44.8 in
36	South Carolina	45.6 in
37	Virginia	46.4 in
38	New Jersey	46.5 in
39	Georgia	47.4 in
40	Rhode Island	47.5 in
41	Maine	47.7 in
42	Arkansas	48.2 in
43	Kentucky	48.5 in
44	New York	48.7 in
45	Florida	50.2 in
46	Tennessee	52.2 in
47	Alabama	55.8 in
48	Mississippi	56.7 in
49	the US Virgin Islands	57.2 in
50	Louisiana	59.2 in

Sources and method

NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 climate normals, MLY-PRCP-NORMAL (via tape_readings) · 1991-2020

How we got this. Annual rainfall comes from tape_readings, which src/tape/rain.ts reads from NOAA NCEI's 1991-2020 monthly climate normals (monthly precipitation summed to a year) at the nearest airport-network station that carries the field. A state is the population-weighted mean of its five largest cities' readings. Cities and states each rank on their own list, driest first. It refreshes static normals; re-run any time.

Rankings by The Honest Local from public data, one page per list, refreshed on each source’s own cycle. Places with no reading are left out rather than estimated. Every value on this page carries its source in the page’s structured data.