The rain-shadow created by the Sierra Nevada is felt throughout the area except on the tops of the highest mountain ranges. Influenced by Pacific storms in the winter and spring, monsoonal rains in the middle to late summer, and occasional cold, Arctic outbreaks in the depths of winter a climate of great extremes has come to characterize the region. This harsh climate has bred a very hardy vegetation type that can survive both its hot, dry summers and its cold, dry winters. Great Basin vegetation runs the range from valley floor salt desert shrub communities to subalpine and alpine grasslands. In the wetter regions the shrub steppes are grassy , in the drier areas they are not.
Marshes often fill the basins below the tallest and wettest of the Basin mountain ranges.
At low elevations native grasses and other plants have succumbed to invading cheat grass and other Eurasian plant species that follow in the wake of cattle. At higher elevations native plants still stave-off the invader.