How come most mountain ranges are rocky, dry, arid and snow capped while the appalachians are densely forested and highly humid?

rain comes up northeast from the atlantic ocean and most other moutain ranges rain goes against the line of the range instead of alongside it. Most mountain ranges have a wet side and a dry side.

>>81593640 (OP)
>6,684 ft
>Sierra Nevada is 14,505 ft
lower elevation

>>81593873
this but they used to be as tall as a the Rockies and Himalayas but they've eroded over millions of years. Fun fact the Scottish highlands are actually part of the same range, the mountains predate the separation of the continents.

fun fact the john denver song country roads lyric "blue ridge mountains shenandoah river / life is old there older than the trees / younger than the mountains" is because the mountains in the area literally predate the existence of life on earth

>>81593960
if they're older than trees where did all the coal come from since that's what coal is, layers of upon layers of compacted dead trees because nothing at that time could decompose cellulose.

>>81593927
Also I'm pretty sure the Scottish highlands should, and used to, look much like the Appalachians, but have been left barren and lacking biodiversity because of deforesation and over-grazing among other things. It's funny, people find them so striking and romanticise them but what they are is essentially a man-made desert.

>>81593992
they are legitimately the oldest mountains on earth, i promise. but yes, they have coal, for a bunch of reasons, i won't pretend to understand it fully but i think it's mostly that the mountains have changed over a lot of time basically. they've eroded and rebuilt themselves many times and have collected organic material inside them since organic material first appeared there, so many of the rock formations themselves are legitimately older than trees, but yeah there's still coal, mostly long strips of anthracite coal according to the internet. see: "The Appalachian Coalfield in Historical Context," C. E. Zipper et al., or watch this fun youtube video: /watch?v=xgB0NGWAA5Q

>>81594029
they're actually naturally a temperate rainforest, rewilding the moors back into rainforest is super trendy rn, its like gentrification but for farmland

>>81593992
>that's what coal is, layers of upon layers of compacted dead trees