Q: Deserts are supposed to get cold at night. How cold does it get here?
After sundown, the desert loses heat as fast as it soaks it up during the day - there's no cloud layer to stop it escaping. So the desert can get very cold at night - even below freezing in winter.
But for the animals and plants that live out there, the real problem is not how low the temperature gets at night but how extreme the variation in temperature is between day and night, or between one season and another.
In some parts of the desert, winter lows and summer highs can be 50 degrees apart! ... Where else has annual temperature ranges of this size?
