The American Mountains, Great Lakes Earth

[Jdailey]

This is a map of the Rocky Mountains as present in Alternate Earth 111, known more casually as Great Lakes Earth.





It's not just the location that makes their Rockies different from ours. While our Rockies stand no taller than 14,440 feet above sea level, the tallest peak in a Great Lakes Rockies is measured to be 14,505 feet above sea level.


On Great Lakes Earth, only the Rockies stand firm—no Coast Range, no Grand Canyon and most certainly no Sierra Nevada.



The Appalachian Range, at first glance, doesn’t seem so different—low-lying hills covered in forest dominating the eastern landscape. However, they are taller—7,244 feet above sea level at the highest, compared to Mount Mitchell back home, which is over 6500 feet above sea level. Indeed, the Appalachians on Great Lakes Earth are a labyrinth of solid gneiss and granite, a macrocosm of the Black Hills and Yosemite, both of which we have but Great Lakes Earth doesn’t.




With these changes, how would this affect North America's climate, weather and landscape? How would they affect the danger zone called Tornado Alley? Will the Midwest still be prairie? Will the West still be desert?