Introduction and request for advice

[ravells]

All I can say is that I just love to see Americans using expressions like 'suss it out for themselves' - it's good to see language is porous both ways across the pond!

Yay!

Ravs

[RPMiller]

Check this out as well:

That sir is a most excellent link! Thank you!

[RPMiller]

across the pond!

What is this pond you speak of? What strange language are you using? :wink:

[Calendril]

So I spent this weekend redesigning a big chunk of the map and rescaling it. Most of my time was eaten up buying and trying to figure out Fractal Terrains Pro and getting very frustrated. Then I downloaded the free Bryce 5.5 and decided that I'll commission an artist at a later date to paint the durn thing once all the climates and such are in place. At that point, I may be brave enough to try CC3 (who knows).

I dropped in an outline of California to show the scale in a bit more visual vein.

My question is, Given that the land mass is so narrow, is it even possible to get a southern california-like desert in any of the unshaded areas?

[ravells]

The Atacama desert in Chile might be a good reference to work from.

Ravs

[RPMiller]

Those types of deserts are caused by what is known as mountain shadow. The mountains cause the rain laden clouds to dump their moisture on the seaward side of them and thus they are dry before they make it to the other side with the exception of monsoon seasons and such. If you want deserts in that area, you just need to make sure the precipitation levels are very low.

I think I made a post up above explaining the geography and concept based on RobA's suggestions.

[Calendril]

I did read through the messages and the links posted by ravells and Climate Cookbook. I'm just a bit confused and I thought that my land mass may be too narrow to sufficiently dry out the air. I thought I might just place things according to the Koppen table.

I've experience the mountain shadow effect before and it's really kinda weird. I used to live in Washington state and the Cascade mountains are just weird. On the western side, they're lush, green, and full of pine. Just after you cross them to the eastern side, the terrain is all brown and very dry. That lasts pretty much the entire way until you get to Spokane.

The odd thing is, both the Atacama desert and the San Diego area have very little precipition, though they are right on the west coasts with their mountains to the east. According to references I could find, they both have air currents that should bring moisture to them and be blocked by the mountains. But the Koppen table does list a dry/hot climate on west coasts if the ocean currents are cold. I guess I can go with that.

[RPMiller]

That would work. The SD area doesn't have frigid water, but it is the colder half of the ocean currents in that area.

[Calendril]

This week I've been reading Geoff's Climate Cookbook and nagging a oceanographer who's in my D&D group. The sad thing is, I found out that I can justify almost any climate/geography and still have the principles based on real earth conditions. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...8565a-f1.2.jpg

Apparently the ocean currents can run differently at different depths: ice-cold currents running through the equator. But I am very glad of the help here on the board that has let me have just a peek at understanding how those elements relate to each other.

To that end - here's my work so far. There's still a lot to go though; it has a lot of blank areas that aren't meant to be just grasslands. I need to do rivers, lakes, set up cities, roads/trade routes, and so on.

[Calendril]

Here's the primary water currents I came up with. The major wind direction is shown at the bottom. From the south, it blows N-NE