Deserts
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American Deserts

The Living Desert is located in the Colorado "Desert", one of the six subdivisions of the Sonoran Desert, which is one of the five sections of the North American Desert, which extends from Mexico all the way up into British Columbia.

The name of our local desert, Colorado, comes from the Colorado River, which is roughly its eastern boundary. Just north of us here in the Coachella Valley, is the Mojave Desert. The Mojave and Colorado regions are commonly called the "high" and "low" deserts, respectively, even though the Mojave claims Death Valley, the lowest spot in the Western Hemisphere at 282 feet below sea level. Most of the Mojave has an average elevation of 2,000-4,000 feet above sea level, and so is the cooler of the two regions. Average elevation of the Colorado desert is about 1,000 feet.

Frequently, a barrier of high mountains keeps moist air from entering deserts. The Atlas, Caucasus, Zagros, Sierra Nevada, Andes, Himalayas, and locally, the Santa Rosas, are among the formidable barriers to desert rains. It takes an extremely strong storm to surmount or skirt such mountains. Living Desert's summer rain storms often start as hurricanes in the Gulf of California.