How can I keep an area next to a mountain range from being a desert?
My world has a continent in the northern hemisphere that lies primarily in the Ferrel cell where the westerly winds are. The continent is fairly large, just a tad bit smaller then than North America. On the East coast there is a mountain range running from the top to the bottom of the continent, it's biggish. Tall enough to have snow, but not ridiculously massive.
My problem is I want to have a region further east of these mountains, between them and the sea, that has a climate similar to that of Baltimore or just the general area of the East Coast United States. However I am unsure as to how this would be possible given the geography of this continent.
So, how can I make this possible? Or is it completely impossible?
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1 answer
So you want a less eroded version of the Appalachian Mountains?
If rain (and humidity) come from the ocean, mountains will not stop areas between the ocean and the mountains from getting that rain. The existing East Coast of the United States is quite wet, because the rain does come from the Atlantic (from the east and the south, even the southwest in some places) and it hits those areas before the mountains can be an issue.
Yes, the winds are westerly. But, hey, there's a mountain range blocking winds from the west from hitting the East Coast. Some will get through, but the ocean will have a lot more influence. All you have to do to avoid a desert is to assume that the westerly winds have less of an effect than the general movement of the wind over the oceans.
With higher mountains than what exist in real life, you may get rain shadows to the west of the mountains, especially if the westerly winds that hit the base of it aren't bringing moisture.
If weather patterns have more trouble clearing the mountains in your world vs our real world, you may end up with an East Coast that is wetter than what already exists.
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