Rekko
Rekko
The northern plains could probably get some rain and snow coming south from Karrn Bay.
The Blade Desert is in a rain shadow but that doesn't mean that the entire plain is
Part of the Blade Desert is in a rain shadow. The rest of it is right under the northern tropic.
The only bit of the Plains that is actually far enough north to get snow, however, is in a rain shadow. So barring the occasional polar airmass, it's not going to get much.
Even if in the real world dinosaurs were cold blooded (and I swear I remember people saying that the name Dinosaur, which means big lizard, is actually a bad name, because it turns out they are warm blooded) in the real world, nothing says their D&D equivalents are as well.
As if Eberron (or D&D or fantasy in general) even gave a flying flip regarding what current scientific models have to say about anything to begin with...
(It snows, but the snow is radioactive!)
Compare that to just up in the pan handle, where it snows much more regularly.
Went to Phoenix once and it was short wearing weather. Go up to Flagstaff, and wake up the next morning and it's winter wonderland.
Compare that to just up in the pan handle, where it snows much more regularly.
Yep, it snows pretty frequently up here in the panhandle, though it always burns off by mid-afternoon. The only exception I've seen was this year's blizzard which snowed the whole city in and left remnants of its drifts for a whole extra day. This place is serious plains land, too; if not for the modern stuff it'd be nothing but grass (and a bloody great hole in the ground) for days in every direction. Based on that (barring intelligent analysis of rainshadows, geography, and such), I'd say it sure can snow in the Talenta plains.
(barring intelligent analysis of rainshadows, geography, and such)
Without barring intelligent analysis of said, looking at the map, it should be a tropical dry climate ranging to semiarid, and largely lowland (although it would be nice to have a topographical map of Khorvaire to confirm that) - so while there might occasionally be some snow in the higher elevation areas northeast of Lake Cyre, for the majority of the plains it would be rare to nonexistent.
EDIT: OK, this is just confusing. I can't tell where the runoff that supposedly drains into Lake Cyre is coming from: while it is almost completely surrounded by highlands, a lake that size would have to be fed either by glacial runoff, a large drainage basin (pretty much the entire runoff of the plains, in fact), or an awful lot of precipitation. So either there are lots of little rivers in the Talenta that just aren't on the map, or the geography is more fanciful than practical and so anything goes.
Mild, but snowy winters in Aundair vs. harsh snowy winters in Karrnath (Lake effect from Lake Galifar? - would kind of explain the Eldeen Reaches being between two huge mountain ranges...)
Is the Blade Desert a High Desert by necessity? Would the rest of the Valenar peninsula be necessarily pretty dry, even arid, except for maybe the Redwater river valley?
Presuming Q'barra and the lower Lhazaar islands are tropical, how do you rationalize the rapid change to cold temperate, even arctic conditions in the rest of the Lhazaar Principalities?
Mild, but snowy winters in Aundair vs. harsh snowy winters in Karrnath (Lake effect from Lake Galifar? - would kind of explain the Eldeen Reaches being between two huge mountain ranges...)
The countries are fairly large, so broad generalizations like that aren't entirely helpful. Karrnath, in particular, should actually be mostly temperate, but the eastern end of the country has a finger of arctic air pushing south over it (indicated by the place-names - there's got to be something unusual about how cold it is around Icewood, the Iceflow River, and the Icetop Mountains, otherwise there's not really much point in calling them that).
Is the Blade Desert a High Desert by necessity?
As I mentioned before, it's right under a tropic, which is the point of highest pressure gradient. Consequently there's not going to be very much rain there, leading to an increased chance of desertification. The fact that the endworld mountains block moisture from coming in from the east means that the rest of the Plains abutting them are fairly dry, contributing to the spread of the desert.
Would the rest of the Valenar peninsula be necessarily pretty dry, even arid, except for maybe the Redwater river valley?
Actually, it ought to closely resemble the Serengeti - enough precipitation to support plentiful grasses and shrubs, fewer large trees, plenty of animal life. The lower tip of Valenar would be tropical rain forest, as it skirts the edge of the intertropical convergence zone. Most of the south coast of Khorvaire would be the same, as it's only about 6-10 degrees away from the equator (Sharn's notoriously rainy climate is not actually out of place for its geography - the only reason it seems worse there is because of towerspit).
Presuming Q'barra and the lower Lhazaar islands are tropical, how do you rationalize the rapid change to cold temperate, even arctic conditions in the rest of the Lhazaar Principalities?
Q'barra is right on the northern tropic as well, but is getting all the moisture that gets squeezed out by the Endworld Mountains, as well as possibly receiving periodic tropical storm systems. As for the Lhazaar, they cover a massive range of latitude, so every conceivable weather pattern (except continental cooling) should be possible at some point in their territories.
(Intelligent and informed analysis of the geography and meteorology of Khorvaire.)
That's really cool, and thanks for lending your knowledge on the subject (seriously; I was browsing back to the thread to post a 'Seconded.' reply to the post asking for more analysis when I saw that you'd already given it). Please do not take it personally when I say, though, that it has as much utility and bearing in any given game as that misguided old analysis of 3e's economic system that Edymnion posted to Regdar's back in the day.
I'm so not trying to be a smartass here, and I don't mean to belittle your contribution, because it's actually quite fascinating to see the structure behind what weather patterns Khorvaire's geography would actually give rise to. I'm not trying to paint you as being some kind of reality-bound weather Nazi or something. I just think that it's important to point out that the only answer of genuine merit (in my opinion) is 'If the DM says it does.' Maybe with some side-annotation pointing out that it snows in some real-world plains, so why not in these, but ultimately it's just up to the writer's whim.
Of course, if everyone at the table (or even just one person) has ChrisTheS' knowledge, then it might be prudent to play to it, but then again maybe not. It's probably best just to hand-wave it as a fantasy world where things work the way they do, lest we start in on dragonflight and other such violations of the rules.
TLDR: Thank you for the education (really, it was cool!), ChrisTheS, but I don't think the facts of how it should work matter even a fraction as much as how the DM (and setting creator) wants it to work.
