The Antarctic，a Desert of Ice All Year Round The antarctic is actually a desert．It is the only continent on the earth without a river or a lake． The antarctic is all ice all year round．The warmest temperature ever recorded there is zero，at the South Pole．Explorers used to think that a place so cold would have a heavy snow－fall．But less than ten inches of snow falls each year．That is less than half an inch of water．Ten times that much moisture falls in parts of the Sahara． The little snow that falls in Antarctica never melts．It continues to pile up deeper and deeper year after year and century after century．When the snow gets to be about eighty feet deep it is turned to ice by the weight of the snow above it．