Washington State

My first overhead illustrates Precipitation vs. Elevation. I randomly chose 16 cities and/or sites in Washington State and plotted their elevation and annual precipitation. The plotted cities/sites from left to right are as follows: Neah Bay, UW, Point Grenville, Bellingham, Sequim, Snoqualmie Falls, Wenatchee, Baring, Yakima, Leavenworth, Ellensburg, Cedar Lake, Cle Elum, Lake Wenatchee, Snoqualmie Pass, and Stevens Pass. This graph shows that precipitation is not necessarily positively correlated with elevation. In other words, as elevation increases, the amount of rainfall does not necessarily increase. I did, however, find that there is a correlation between cities and their proximity to the Pacific Ocean, the Olympic National Forest and the Cascade Mountains.

My second graph, Precipitation vs. East to West, illustrates this point. I plotted eight of the previous cities/sites from their location East to West. As you can see, Neah Bay which sits right on the edge of the Peninsula gets a vast amount of annual rainfall. When you move closer inland to Sequim and UW, the precipitation levels drastically drop off. When you start to travel closer to the Cascade Mountains the precipitation levels increase and become very high through the Passes. After descending from the Mountains to Leavenworth and Wenatchee, the cities show a small amount of rainfall because they are in a "Rain Shadow" caused by the mountains.

Orographic precipitation

The graphic of orographic precipitaion shows an example of how clouds form and them precipitate as they move up a mountain slope, and how on the other side there is a rain shadow effect and warm dry winds.

 

The Graphic of the rainfall shows that the areas of higher elevation recieve on average more rainfall than the low elevations, by
comparing the rainfall chart with the elevation chart, you can see that the olympic and the cascade mountains recieve a lot of precipitation. The key is for the elevation graph.