Check out the world's cloudiest and clearest spots

If you're curious about where clouds tend to hang out, check out this NASA image that shows the Earth's cloudiest and clearest spots.

The map shows an average of all the Earth's clouds from July 2002 to April 2015. Colors range from dark blue (no clouds) to light blue (some clouds) to white (frequent clouds).

It was based on data collected from NASA's Aqua satellite.

Overall, Earth is a cloudy planet: about 67% of the sky typically is covered by clouds. This is especially true over the oceans, which are only about 10% clear at any given time, NASA said.

Dry desert locations, naturally, are the clearest. The Sahara Desert in Africa and the deserts of the Middle East are practically cloud-free.

The Atacama Desert in western South America also stands out. It's one of the least cloudy and rainy spots on the planet. Arica, Chile, only gets 0.03 inch of rain per year, on average, and once went 14 years without rain, according to the National Climatic Data Center.

Here in the USA, the desert southwest stands out for its lack of clouds. If you hate clouds, head for Yuma, Ariz., which typically sees sunshine about 90% of the time and only gets about 3 inches of rain a year, the data center reports.

The USA's cloudiest areas are the Pacific Northwest and around the Great Lakes. Cities such as Seattle, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Portland, Ore., and Buffalo all see more clouds than sun.

Because the map is an average of all of the available cloud observations from Aqua, it doesn't illustrate daily or seasonal variations of clouds, NASA said. Nor does the map offer insight into the altitude of clouds or the presence or absence of multiple layers of clouds.