I understand they’re wet because there is a lot of precipitation, but what is it about the weather pattern that creates all that wetness?
In: Biology
When water evaporates in the ocean and forms clouds, wind pushes them around the globe. Sometimes they get pushed into mountains. Mountains cause the air to rise (imagine blowing air at a slope, it has to go up), and mountains usually have colder air masses over them any way. As the clouds cool, due to rising or entering a colder air mass, they can’t hold as much water vapor before it condenses into droplets. Those droplets turn into rain. Mountains cause clouds to rain. You see rain forests in areas where prevailing wind patterns push air into large mountain ranges. In the northern hemisphere, air currents (generally) rotate clockwise, and counterclockwise in the southern hemisphere. In the northwest of North America, air currents off of the Pacific Ocean (which are coming from the east, or north east) push clouds into the Coast and Cascade Ranges. These are high enough that they cause the clouds to cool down and release their water as rain, causing rain forests in Washington and British Columbia. In South America, it’s from the opposite direction. Air from the southern Atlantic blows in towards the Andes Mountains, which have the same effect, causing the clouds to rain over the Amazonian rain forest.
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