AVERAGE TEMPERATURE AND FALL OF RAIN. 39 



annual quantity is less, and generally much less rain falls 

 in winter than in the other seasons. 



The region of scanty rains embraces the country between 

 about the 100th meridian of longitude and the Cascade 

 and Sierra Nevada Mountains. It includes the northern 

 and southern divisions of the Pacific slope, the inland basin 

 of Utah, the table-lands of the Texas slope, and the sterile 

 region east of the Rocky Mountains. 



Among the mountains of this region a considerable 

 quantity of rain falls, and violent showers are experienced 

 in all seasons of the year. Some of the mountain valleys 

 are also well watered. Thus the annual fall of rain at 

 Santa Fe, situated on a plateau enclosed by mountains, is 

 19.83 inches ; and the fall at Fort Massachusetts, which is 

 situated in a valley 100 miles further north, is 20.54 inches. 



The annual fall of rain in the desert region, through 

 which the great Colorado flows, is estimated at three inches ; 

 that of the inland basin of Utah, at five inches; of the 

 Great Plain south of the Columbia River, ten inches ; of 

 the Llano Estacado, ten inches ; and of the sterile region 

 east of the Rocky Mountains, from fifteen to twenty 

 inches. In all these sections scarcely any rain falls in 

 summer. 



The greatest amount of rain reported in the "Army 

 Meteorological Register," for any given year, was the fall, 

 in 1846, at Baton Rouge, of 116.6 inches; the least, a fall, 

 in 1853, at Fort Yuma, California, of 1.78 inches. 



