The
Great Basin is an
endorheic watershed, if you know what that means… for that matter, its still one even if you don't know what it means.
In fact, it's the largest area of contiguous endorheic watersheds in all of of
North America! And, is particularly notable for both its arid conditions and its widely varied Basin and Range topography.
The North American low-point, at
Badwater Basin, is less than 100 miles away from the contiguous United States' highpoint, at
Mount Whitney summit.
Endorheic Basin
"Endorheic" is one of those high-falutin' Greek based words (meaning "within" and "to flow"); which, to us normo-falutin' people, translates into:
"a closed drainage basin which retains water and allows no outflow to other bodies of water such as rivers or oceans." It may also be called an "internal drainage system."
Normally, water that finds itself in a drainage basin eventually flows out through rivers or streams or permeable rock – ultimately winding up in an ocean.
An endorheic basin… not so much. In such a basin, the center is lower than any possible route to the ocean, and to top it off the rock isn't all that permeable. So any water that gets in pretty much has only two options: evaporation and seepage.
