Mondo Knows Facts
The Patagonian Desert lies in the Andes rain shadow
Westerly winds drop their moisture on the mountains, leaving the eastern plains dry The desert covers around 670,000 square kilometres, almost all of it in Argentina. Cold winds sweep across grass and shrub steppe, and sheep grazing has shaped the vegetation for more than a century. Rainfall falls away sharply within a short distance east of the mountain crest. It sits in Mondo's world geography collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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More facts like this
The Kalahari is not quite a true desertIt gets enough rain to grow grass and trees, so many classify it as dry savannaAntarctica is technically the largest desert on EarthAntarctica receives an average of less than 200 millimetres of precipitation each year along its coast and far less inland.The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the worldSpanning over nine million square kilometres, the Sahara covers much of North Africa.The Gobi is a cold desert made by distanceThe plateau lies so far inland that monsoon moisture is gone before the air arrivesThe Sonoran is the wettest desert on EarthTwo separate rainy seasons support trees, large cacti and animals found in few other desertsMagellan found a sea route past South AmericaBefore the Panama Canal opened, ships rounded South America through this 570 kilometre passage
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Tags: deserts, south-america, climate
The Patagonian Desert lies in the Andes rain shadow: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Westerly winds drop their moisture on the mountains, leaving the eastern plains dry. The figure is taken from Met Office, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a world geography fact?
- Yes. It sits on the World Geography shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.