At the Southern end of Israel is the Dead Sea - the lowest lying body of water in the world, and the most salty, it's surface almost 1,300 feet below sea level.

The Dead Sea stretches 49 miles from North to South and 10 miles across. Less than 40mm annual rainfall and a mean relative humidity 34%-50% average means maximum daytime temperatures from 20 C (68 F) in January to 39 C (102 F) in July.

Although no trace of them remains today, some scholars have speculated that Sodom and Gomorrah were located at a site that is now beneath the shallow waters of the Southern end of the sea.
Sodom and Gomorrah were cities whose sin was great - the men of the cities were utterly wicked and God destroyed them.

The Dead Sea scrolls were discovered between 1947 and 1952 in caves at Qumran. From the caves came 40,000 fragments that had to be pieced together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. By 1960, when the puzzle was more or less finished, close to 580 fragmentary texts had been assembled.
Some were biblical texts, copies of Old Testament books; others were sectarian writings, rulebooks, hymnbooks, or prayer books of the Essenes, the Jewish community who had dwelled in Qumran.

Genesis 19 vv 24,25
Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.