How to Use rain shadow in a Sentence

rain shadow

noun
  • If Provence is the sun king of lavender fields, then Sequim is the rain shadow queen.
    — Andrea Sachs, Washington Post, 22 July 2022
  • Mustang lies in the rain shadow of the nearby ranges, making its landscape a medley of mountain and desert.
    — Condé Nast, Condé Nast Traveler, 27 Feb. 2026
  • Medford is inland, and somewhat in a rain shadow behind the Siskiyou mountains.
    — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 24 Feb. 2011
  • The Rocky Mountains were continuing to rise, and their rain shadow dried out the Great Plains.
    — Andrew L. Hipp, Scientific American, 15 July 2020
  • As a result, San Jose is in a rain shadow and typically sheltered from major rainfall.
    — Jack Lee, San Francisco Chronicle, 14 Feb. 2025
  • This striking contrast highlights the rain shadow effect, where a region on the side of a mountain range is protected from the prevailing winds.
    — Ron Estes, MSNBC Newsweek, 31 Mar. 2025
  • The final effect is a rain shadow, where there’s significantly less rainfall behind a mountain region.
    — Gwendolyn Wu, San Francisco Chronicle, 3 Nov. 2021
  • But the Great Basin of Nevada beyond the Sierra to the east is largely left in a gigantic rain shadow.
    — Los Angeles Times, 4 Jan. 2023
  • At those elevations, the rain shadow of the Coast Range means slightly lower rainfall totals, cooler springs and warmer autumns.
    — Michael Alberty | For The Oregonian/oregonlive, oregonlive, 4 June 2020
  • The lower totals in the valleys are a result of the rain shadow effect, where outlying mountain ranges keep storm clouds from bringing their full effect overhead Gass said.
    — Austin Turner, The Mercury News, 18 Jan. 2024
  • The National Park Service says the west side remains cooler than the east side, which lies in a rain shadow and can get up to 90 degrees.
    — Andrea Romano, Travel + Leisure, 29 Apr. 2023
  • Today, the Gobi sits in the rain shadow of the Himalayan Mountains, and is surprisingly good for finding fossils – if your timing is right.
    — Jon Tennant, Discover Magazine, 4 May 2016
  • Hidden in the rain shadow of the Himalayas, Mustang borders the Tibetan Plateau and has a distinctive, windswept red-desert landscape.
    — Jen Murphy, Robb Report, 23 Sep. 2023
  • On islands such as Maui, where a volcanic spine runs down the middle of the island, the eastern flanks are generally moist and lush — while the western slopes are in a rain shadow and typically drier.
    — Susanne Rust, Los Angeles Times, 11 Aug. 2023
  • But coastal mountains in the interior of the Yukon and Alaska blocked all precipitation, creating rain shadow patches of land that were too dry to support glaciers.
    — Diane Selkirk, Smithsonian Magazine, 8 July 2022
  • Marchesi credited the combination of rain shadow protection and the loess soils deposited in the region by the prehistoric Missoula Floods with defining the region’s wines.
    — Michael Alberty | For The Oregonian/oregonlive, oregonlive, 4 June 2020
  • The Olympic Peninsula is one of the most beautiful corners of the Pacific Northwest, and one unusually sunny nook is Sequim, a tiny town that is located in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains.
    — Evie Carrick, Travel + Leisure, 20 June 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'rain shadow.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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