Death Valley ... Mt. Whitney. It wasn’t until I descended a few thousand feet to my tent that things started to go sideways. It began to hail, which turned into pounding, pooling, monsoon-like rain.

Runners in this summer’s Badwater 135 Ultramarathon will take off across Death Valley and over three mountain ranges to finish at the portal to Mt. Whitney west of Lone Pine, Calif. The race ...

The reason why the peaks are snow-covered and why hot, dry Death Valley is east of the Sierra Nevada range is the same: They are both the result of the rain shadow effect. To understand how this ...