Geography and Weather

[CantFeelMyFace]

As a lot of you may know, I am writing about a fictional world. I drew a map of the area where the story is based and have put in mountains, rivers, plains etc. that are mentioned in the story and are sometimes integral to it. I am trying to be as consistent as I can i.e I want the area to look geographically authentic. I mention the changing of the seasons too in the text following a model which is found a a particular area of the world but I don't honestly know if it all marries up. I remember from the little geography I did do at school that the landscape and position of a place influences the type of seasons etc.

Is anyone aware of any resources I could use to research this to make it as authentic as possible? TIA :-)

[StrawberryQuik]

Wikipedia?

Sorry no good ideas. More seriously though, I also am writing a fictional world and the way I've been trying to make the climate accurate is by giving the different places weather similar to different European countries...so the kingdom at the bottom of my imaginary land has warm meditterenean weather the one at the top has cold weather, the place by the sea I've made similar to the Irish coast etc etc.

Within that I think of towns I know in real life, so big cities get hot, little villages tend to be colder etc.

[SnugglySnerd]

A decent geography text book should do! Or a GCSE or A level revision site.
It depends on latitude e.g. tropical, polar region etc and on proximity to the sea. Higher places are cooler than lowlands.

[lljkk]

rain falls on the (?) prevailing wind side of mountains. The other side will be relatively less rainy. It's quite a pernickety detail to worry about, though.

[CantFeelMyFace]

what do you mean lljkk ? The next thing on my list was to research exact cloud shapes for the part of the world my novel is set in

Cheers guys...may be I could write a book...geography and weather for writers...ker-ching!

[lljkk]

google 'rain shadow', CFMF.

[CantFeelMyFace]

Oh, I was just joking, Lljkk, got lost in transcription...