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The Sonoran desert has an arid subtropical climate and is considered to be the most tropical desert in North America. [8] In the lower-elevation portions of the desert, temperatures are warm year-round, and rainfall is infrequent and irregular, often less than 90 mm (approx. 3.5") annually.
Phoenix has a hot desert climate (Köppen: BWh), [1] [2] typical of the Sonoran Desert, and is the largest city in America in this climatic zone. [3] Phoenix has long, extremely hot summers and short, mild winters. The city is within one of the world's sunniest regions, with its sunshine duration comparable to the Sahara region.
Mean annual rainfall, most of which occurs between September and December, is 73 mm (2.9 in) at Puerto Peñasco, Sonora (located at the southeastern margin of the sand sea on the Gulf of California) and decreases northward toward Yuma, Arizona (on the northwestern edge) to 62 mm (2.4 in) per year. [7]
The western part of the contiguous United States west of the 98th meridian, the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, the Willamette Valley, and the Sierra Nevada range are the wetter portions of the nation, with average rainfall exceeding 30 inches (760 mm) per year. The drier areas are the Desert Southwest, Great Basin, valleys of northeast ...
Sonoran Desert at Saguaro National Park. Northern Arizona and New Mexico, central and northern Nevada and most of Utah (outside higher mountain areas) have a temperate semi-desert to desert climate, but with colder and snowier winters than in Phoenix and similar areas, and less-hot summers (as at Salt Lake City, Utah). Summer high temperatures ...
Tucson has a hot desert climate (Köppen BWh), with two major seasons, a hot summer and mild winter. Tucson averages 10.61 inches (269.5 mm) of precipitation per year, concentrated during the Pacific storms of winter and the North American Monsoon of summer. Fall and spring tend to be sunny and dry. [67]
When people think of the desert southwest, the landscape of the Sonoran Desert is what mostly comes to mind. [12] The Sonoran Desert makes up the southwestern portion of the Southwest. Rainfall averages between 4–12 inches per year, and the desert's most widely known inhabitant is the saguaro cactus, which is unique to the desert.
The precipitation threshold (in millimetres) involves first multiplying the average annual temperature in °C by 20, then adding 280 if 70% or more of the total precipitation is in the high-sun summer half of the year (April through September in the Northern Hemisphere, or October through March in the Southern), or 140 if 30–70% of the total ...