Sandpoint Idaho and Palm Desert may experience contrasting weather patterns throughout the year, but they still have similar climatology.
The biggest similarity would be on the meso-scale climate control with their mountain ranges. Palm Desert has the San Jacinto Mountains to the west as Sandpoint has the Big Horn Mountain range to their west. The mountain ranges specifically to the west cause tremendous effects on the climate to the areas of the east of them. The biggest is the high winds that come off the mountains and the little precipitation that is left for that region.
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| San Jacinto Mountains, Palm Desert, CA http://www.northcountycruisers.com/palmdeserttrip.html |
Another meso-scale that plays a role on both locations is the water that is close to them. For Palm Desert, the Salton Sea is located just southeast. For Sandpoint, they have Lake Pend Oreille, which is the largest lake in Idaho. The water does not play that large of a role for these areas, but it is a factor. The lakes help control some of the temperature changes throughout the night and day (latent heat flux).
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| Pend Oreille Lake, Sandpoint, ID http://www.idahobyways.gov/byways/panhandle-rivers.aspx |
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| Salton Sea, Palm Desert, CA http://sky.colabour.com/pages/p5.html |
Based on the Koppen-Geiger Climate Classification Palm Desert is classified as BWh and Sandpoint is classified as Bsk. Both locations general climate is B indicating it is an arid climate. Precipitation wise they are also similar Palm Desert is classified as a desert where Sandpoint is a steep (not quite a desert, but very similar just up to 50 cm more of precipitation). However since they are located at different latitudes they experience different temperatures Palm Desert is in a hot arid region where Sandpoint is in a cool arid region. Even though comparably speaking Sandpoint and Palm Desert experiences huge temperature scales they are very similar climatically when talking about precipitation and general climate.
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| Source: Excel, http://sandpointidahoweather.blogspot.com/2011/10/blog-post.html, and http://palmdesertwx.tumblr.com/ |
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