Currents in the ocean also matter. There are places in Canada, on Hudson Bay, where they have a lot of trouble with polar bears. At the same latitude in England, they grow palm trees. The culprit is the Gulf Stream.
Wow, thanks for all the info! Looks like I can throw out the steppes stuff - I was under the impression that they were necessary near mountain ranges.
What I'm concerned now is that if canon has dictated a northern mountain range with frequent blizzards, winter year around...what can be north of that? Is it taiga, or alpine tundra? Somehow it's not clicking in my head that "mountain blizzards are south of taiga."
Sadly I don't think I can get access to Once in a Lifetime Inuit in Nepal, although it sounds absolutely awesome. Maybe I can try an interlibrary loan.
Snow/blizzards are a factor of altitude as well as latitude. Look at Mount Everest on Google Maps - it's at roughly the same latitude as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Northern India, and Taiwan, which are all desert or tropical places. If your mountain range is high enough (but further south in latitude), it would be perfectly believable to have tropical rainforests north of your mountain blizzards, so mountainous coniferous forests are perfectly fine. Essentially you will have your really tall mountain barrier with year-round blizzards, and to the north this mountain range will slope downwards into a set of lower mountains, which will slope down to forested valleys. As you go lower in altitude the climate will get (relatively) more hospitable. Then, as you continue to go north, the forests will probably give way to tundra and the climate will get harsher again
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Yeah, with the rain shadow thing I was concerned that I would need to have effectively steppes or desert right next to my uber blizzard mountain barrier, and that was why it would actually be very rainy on "my" northern side of the mountain barrier.
I do have some magic in my story, so I think that if I set my mountain barrier close enough to an ocean, I can have southern moderate grasslands (a la magic), my uber blizzard mountain barrier to the north, then north of that is fairly rainy taiga (since these mountains are not going to be as tall as Uber Blizzard Mountain) a la rain shadow, then drier taiga, then subartic tundra and Arctic ocean (which probably will have to be frozen, I'm guessing).
Hey, this is little_details, pedantic is exactly what I need!
While the Himalayas are south of taiga, they aren't exactly northern mountains either. I wasn't sure if it was okay to say "here we have these northern mountains of d00m, and then just north of that is habitable taiga," but looks like I can roll with that. It also sounds like I get to have a lot of fun varying the weather with all of the mountains around. Wind, wind currents everywhere!
It's a bit of a trek to my university library, but if I manage to watch that documentary I think it'll definitely help me shape my culture and its background.
Another excellent example of mountains/tundra with taiga to the north is found in my area: Fairbanks, Alaska. We are at about 64.8 degrees north latitude, and Fairbanks is located in taiga forest -- mostly spruce trees and swamps with significant deciduous trees (aspen, birch) on south-facing slopes. But if you drive south from here, you will encounter the highlands of Denali Park. The highway goes through mostly-treeless tundra, and it's surrounded by mountains that are tall enough to experience year-round winter (especially Mt. McKinley, the tallest mountain in North America -- it's snow-capped even in deepest summer).
On a side note, while you can grow barley and winter wheat at high latitudes, it seems more likely to me (as an Alaska-based gardener) that your agriculture would revolve around something like potatoes as a staple crop, which love cool weather and do very well with a short growing season. Typically the agriculture of far-north places like Alaska and Iceland, or very high alpine locations like the Andes Mountains,
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Thank you so much for your experience! It's hard for me to envision all the effects of mountains since I'm a midwest-person, and everything is flat! I keep going back and forth on "it'll be rainy" vs "it'll be dry" which is why I've been trying to find a real-life example that more or less matches my imagination so that I won't make some climate blooper
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Our summers are usually in the 80s and 90s in June, tapering off to 70s in July and August -- so yeah, quite cool by continental US standards (I used to live in the Midwest - hot sticky summers, ugh!), but warmer than people typically think of the Arctic. It cools off quickly at night, though, and it's the cool nights coupled with the short growing season that tends to be an issue for industrial-scale agriculture. Higher in the mountains, it would be even cooler during the day, and more prone to early frosts. I worked in Denali Park one summer and it snowed on us in June. Early or unseasonable snows/frosts are common in mountain areas; the weather is just kind of unpredictable
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Yup, I began with my fictional culture as mostly mountain nomads, traveling from valley to valley as mainly traders/herders to the few people in the valleys that can sustain a crop. Then I started doing research on what kind of crops could be grown and got lost on what could be grown in the north vs the high altitude, and whether my northern mountain barrier means geologically I couldn't have habitable stuff north of it. So to little_details I went. ;D
I didn't know mountain areas meant that much unpredictable weather; I'm going to have a lot of fun with that! I'll have to keep in mind that summers are quite friendly - which is good, because I plan on making winters really sucky!
On a different note, how do you handle the long summer days vs the long winter nights? With the short summer I'm guessing the long summer days are an advantage in that my fictional culture gets a lot of time to work in the fields/travel, but the long winter nights are different matter...
Mountain weather is fantastically unpredictable and sometimes downright bizarre. I'm most familiar with the White Mountains of New Hampshire, which are much further south and nowhere near as high as the likes of Denali. In spite of that, they're notorious for their unpredictable weather - Mount Washington in particular has some of the highest surface wind speeds ever recorded on earth. It's to the point that there's a book about the many people who have died in the Presidential Range, many of them because they froze to death. In the summer. (It's called Not Without PerilAs for weather that's downright weird, I was skiing once, on a warm and sunny day, when I came to a part of the trail that dropped into a col/notch/really narrow mountain pass. In the col there was a howling blizzard, courtesy of a weather system that was trapped behind the mountains. I stopped about ten feet up the trail to stare at the whiteout conditions in front of me, and where I was standing there was barely a breath of wind
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Ha ha, no prob! Thank you so much for still answering!
I was kind of worried that the long winter nights would lead to like, everyone being all depressed due to all that stuff you hear about seasonal affective disorder, and while I am sure it does and will exist for my fictional culture, it's good to know that in reality winter can be actually mellow rather than just "aaaargh winter why so cruel I hates it." ;D
I knew I should make mention of the solstices, but I didn't know they were that much of a Really Big Deal for a far northern climate, versus just the normal Big Deal for an agrarian/herding culture. Thanks for the heads-up! All your tips have really helped me create an in-depth backstory for my characters.
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What I'm concerned now is that if canon has dictated a northern mountain range with frequent blizzards, winter year around...what can be north of that? Is it taiga, or alpine tundra? Somehow it's not clicking in my head that "mountain blizzards are south of taiga."
Sadly I don't think I can get access to Once in a Lifetime Inuit in Nepal, although it sounds absolutely awesome. Maybe I can try an interlibrary loan.
Reply
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I do have some magic in my story, so I think that if I set my mountain barrier close enough to an ocean, I can have southern moderate grasslands (a la magic), my uber blizzard mountain barrier to the north, then north of that is fairly rainy taiga (since these mountains are not going to be as tall as Uber Blizzard Mountain) a la rain shadow, then drier taiga, then subartic tundra and Arctic ocean (which probably will have to be frozen, I'm guessing).
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While the Himalayas are south of taiga, they aren't exactly northern mountains either. I wasn't sure if it was okay to say "here we have these northern mountains of d00m, and then just north of that is habitable taiga," but looks like I can roll with that. It also sounds like I get to have a lot of fun varying the weather with all of the mountains around. Wind, wind currents everywhere!
It's a bit of a trek to my university library, but if I manage to watch that documentary I think it'll definitely help me shape my culture and its background.
Reply
On a side note, while you can grow barley and winter wheat at high latitudes, it seems more likely to me (as an Alaska-based gardener) that your agriculture would revolve around something like potatoes as a staple crop, which love cool weather and do very well with a short growing season. Typically the agriculture of far-north places like Alaska and Iceland, or very high alpine locations like the Andes Mountains, ( ... )
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I didn't know mountain areas meant that much unpredictable weather; I'm going to have a lot of fun with that! I'll have to keep in mind that summers are quite friendly - which is good, because I plan on making winters really sucky!
On a different note, how do you handle the long summer days vs the long winter nights? With the short summer I'm guessing the long summer days are an advantage in that my fictional culture gets a lot of time to work in the fields/travel, but the long winter nights are different matter...
Reply
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I was kind of worried that the long winter nights would lead to like, everyone being all depressed due to all that stuff you hear about seasonal affective disorder, and while I am sure it does and will exist for my fictional culture, it's good to know that in reality winter can be actually mellow rather than just "aaaargh winter why so cruel I hates it." ;D
I knew I should make mention of the solstices, but I didn't know they were that much of a Really Big Deal for a far northern climate, versus just the normal Big Deal for an agrarian/herding culture. Thanks for the heads-up! All your tips have really helped me create an in-depth backstory for my characters.
Reply
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