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📘 Start with the water

Washington begins at the Pacific, but its western edge is not a simple coastline. Puget Sound is a long inland waterway cut into the land, with the Olympic Peninsula on one side and a crowded chain of islands and inlets between the open oce

2
lessons
~10 min
to learn
Adults
level
Start the course →

What you’ll learn

  1. Wet westRead Puget Sound and the Cascades weather wall.Sound geography and orographic rain on western slopes.
  2. Dry east and cityFollow rain shadow, scablands, Columbia dams and Seattle.Yakima irrigation, Dry Falls, Grand Coulee and the wet-side metropolis.

Questions this course answers

Why is western Washington much wetter than the east?

UW Climate Impacts Group describes orographic rainfall on western Cascades slopes.

What is Dry Falls evidence of?

USGS scablands publications tie Dry Falls to glacial Lake Missoula outburst floods.

Why does agriculture in the Yakima Valley depend on engineering?

The course links Yakima fields to mountain water stored and diverted across dry country.

Grounded in trusted sources

  • University of Washington Climate Impacts Group, Washington's Climate: https://climate.uw.edu/washingtons-climate/
  • Washington State Department of Agriculture, Columbia Basin Project: https://agr.wa.gov/departments/land-and-water/natural-resources/water-quantity/columbia-basin
  • U.S. Geological Survey, A photo of Dry Falls: https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/a-photo-dry-falls
  • U.S. Geological Survey, The channeled scablands of eastern Washington: https://www.usgs.gov/publications/channeled-scablands-eastern-washington-geologic-story-spokane-flood
  • Bureau of Reclamation, Columbia-Pacific Northwest projects: https://www.usbr.gov/pn/project/index.html
  • Wikimedia Commons file pages checked for subject and licence: ISS058-E-11009 - View of Puget Sound.jpg; Mt Rainier WA.JPG; Ag in the Columbia-Pacific Northwest (20151014-KS-Reclamation-0118).jpg; Aerial view of Dry Falls.jpg; Grand Coulee Dam aerial.jpg; Aerial - Wanapum Dam, Columbia River 01 - white balanced (9793432963).jpg; West Seattle aerial.jpg

Every Wunder lesson is built from real, reputable sources — never invented.

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