Looking up several deserts in the US, such as Great Basin, Death Valley, and Mojave, wikipedia says they’re caused by the rain shadow effect. However as you move east into the Rockies, you get rain again. Where does this water come from if it’s been drained out by previous mountain ranges? And why do the Rockies themselves not cause nearly as severe of a rain shadow? The regions east of the Rockies from Canada to the US are not desert anymore.
I like climate science and can’t wrap my head around this one yet.
tl;dr why is the western US so dry but rainy again at and past the Rockies?
In: Earth Science
That’s because of the [Shadow Rain effect](https://www.treehugger.com/thmb/uw6aG-qv4JErLadhu98yjHgV5mQ=/1732×1732/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/GettyImages-1184250907-fddb0d4c371641f681733c8f513e400d.jpg). The rotation of the earth create prevailing winds, when that wind go toward a mountain it drag the rain with it. The mountain will stop the clouds who will accumulate and drop the rain on the region. This leave little humidity for the other side of the mountain.
You can see the direction of the prevailing wind on the earth with this. If you look at a satellite map of the earth and look at South America. You can see that in Northern Chili the humid side is East, but in Southern Chili it’s the west side that is humid. The prevailing wind change direction and so not the same side of the mountain range stop the humidity.
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