In the Hypsithermal, the period of higher-than-present global temperatures that followed the end of the last ice age, the West from the coastal mountains to the Mississippi was far drier than it is today—Nebraska was a desert with sand dunes, for example, and quite a bit ofthe land west of the Rockies was uninhabitable wasteland of the sort you find these days in the Sahara Desert.
From my recent reading on the long term moisture story in the western US, the period after the end of the last ice age was much wetter in the NM/AZ area, because the still-present ice to the north tended to "push" pacific storms in ways that led to precipitation in this area. As the ice receded more and more northwards, this pattern came to an end.
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I enjoyed this, but this paragraph threw me off:
From my recent reading on the long term moisture story in the western US, the period after the end of the last ice age was much wetter in the NM/AZ area, because the still-present ice to the north tended to "push" pacific storms in ways that led to precipitation in this area. As the ice receded more and more northwards, this pattern came to an end.