[ganeshkrishnan]

Big Island is an extremely interesting place. Its just few kilometers wide but it has around 8 climate zones ranging from snow, desert, volcano, tropical, beaches, rainforest what not. You can drive less than an hour and go from desert to snow and snow to tropical.

There is one public bus that goes around and once I was the only passenger and the driver stopped the bus near the ocean to show the travelling whales/dolphins.

[WillPostForFood]

You must be thinking of a different island. Hawaii, the Big Island is big. 93 miles long, 76 miles wide. Maui has a narrow waist (an isthmus connecting two volcanos), 6 miles across.

[gottorf]

This description still applies to Big Island (if we stretch it a bit):

> You can drive less than an hour and go from desert to snow and snow to tropical.

You can drive from the beach on the leeward side, going past dry ranchland with an average annual rainfall of ~10-15" (similar to arid West Texas places like Midland), to the Mauna Kea Observatory, where snow can sometimes be found, in under an hour and a half; and from there across to the windward side, back to the beach at Hilo, with about 10 feet of rain a year, in another hour and 15 minutes or so.

Truly wild and must be seen to be believed.

[jebarker]

Also the tallest mountain on Earth!

[aoki]

For those downvoting: As measured from the planetary surface(=sea floor in this case), as opposed to sea level

[sejje]

How does the rain avoid the desert areas?

[xKingfisher]

It's a "rain shadow"[0]

The predominant wind is from the east, and the air cools aid forms rainclouds as it tries to rise over the mountains in the center of the island. Then warms again as it descends down the eastern slopes.

So the eastern (Hilo) side is pretty lush jungle, and the west(Kona) is desert. With snowy mountains in between.

[0]https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/rain-s...

[Ifkaluva]

Probably rain shadow due to the mountains

[nottorp]

It checks the biome type like in Minecraft!