WIP - My First Map

[Laureli ObsidianFang]

I have looked into Rain shadows now! I sure feel stupid XD I'm sure I learned about them in school at some point, but to be honest I don't remember much from what I learned in school, anyway that's very helpful and interesting, I'll certainly get to work on playing with that and my mountains, perhaps changing up my mountain ranges and such to accommodate this concept better lol. Alright so the idea is basically that one side of a mountain range would be drier and more brownish in appearance than the other would right? But if the mountains were quite tall you would still be able to have rivers from snow melt on the shadowed side wouldn't you? It would just be less and the area would be in general less moist than the other side? I'm very curious about this now so any help from anyone on the topic would be very helpful ^_^

Edit: Not sure where my first reply went, but I'd mentioned that I know the rivers need work and they'll possibly be the hardest thing given how complicated they can be, so they'll get worked on last, and as for the coasts I agree, the right coast looks more natural than the left to me, the western coast looks too rounded in appearance and so the jagged effect looks very strange on it particularly. I'll be working on that as well over time, and I then mentioned that I was unfamiliar with Rain shadows lol

[Veldehar]

There is certainly no rule against a river in the rain shadow. Rain shadows are not necessarily dry, per se, they just tend to be drier than the opposite side. An east coast rain shadow (at a latitude where weather patterns travel west to east) will tend be wetter than a west coast rain shadow at the same latitude, as storms coming in from the warm water east coast will tend to carry more moisture to the rain shadowed area, and in some cases bring in large amounts of tropical moisture from north moving tropical storms like hurricanes on the east coast of the US. Rivers through deserts are certainly possible, see the Nile, Colorado River and Yellow River, so I doubt there is a reason not to be able to have snow melt create a river in even a desert rain shadow. To pass through a hot desert more than seasonally would require a heck of a source, I suspect, to defeat the evaporation.