East v. West
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There's a real basic difference between the climates of eastern and western North America. To say that the east is wet, the west is dry, may be a bit oversimplified but it's so striking when you see the comparison and watch the transition during a flight across country. I'm Dave Thurlow for the Weather Notebook.

Think for a minute about what your feelings are when you visit the other half of the country. What's it look like, what do you notice, what are your first impressions. Well I'll tell you mine. Being an old (not that old) New Englander when I go out west I think OK what'd you do with the trees?

I've often heard people say that when they go from the west to east they think they're in a jungle, and when people from the east go west they think they're on the moon. The climatological dividing line between east and west is pretty ill defined and arbitrary but if you forced me to choose a line it would be route 281 from Texas to North Dakota, just east of the 100th parallel. When I fly across country I try to find route 281, the signal that I'm entering, or back from, the west which despite my being indigenously Eastern, I've come to love.

But I do find that the hazy browns of the desert look lifeless, from up in a plane near the stratosphere. The ground doesn't teem with vegetation like it does in the east. It seems to be scoured to its bare bones by the weather, not nourished by it. In the west you see the hardened wrinkles and lines around the eyes on the skin of the earth. In the east so much is secretive and hidden from view by the foliage, the haze, the humidity, the moisture. The regional climate east and west, dry and wet, shapes the landscape and probably helps to shape each of us.

The Weather Notebook, which is produced by the Mount Washington Observatory is funded by The National Science Foundation, and underwritten by Subaru -- the beauty of All-Wheel Drive.