Earth's Weather: Going in the Wrong Direction?

How come weather systems in the U.S. never come from the northeast, pummel the northeast coast with rain, then travel west across the continent dumping snow on the Alleghenies, then combine with a Nor’wester from Canada and dump a bunch of snow on the Rockies, and finally combine with a southern Pacific hurricane system to dump a whole ton of snow on the west coast…mostly San Francisco up to Seattle??? (us Southern Californians don’t really want all that much weather…it would ruin the avocado crop and make poor guacamole dip).  

Instead, weather systems travel west-to-east.  But the earth is also rotating from west-to-east at speeds up to 1000 miles per hour.  Hence these weather systems are traveling even faster than earth’s rotating speed.  What gives?  Why would weather system travel eastward faster than earth’s rotation speed? Is it due to mountain ridges pushing the air?  Did someone on the east coast do something to anger the gods?  Is it the same in other parts of the earth?  

I would like to think that it is due to us folks on the west coast doing whatever it took to appease the gods (including making excellent guacamole dip).

However, in researching this more closely, I found that weather systems have several reasons for traveling west-to-east: 

a)  The sun heats up the east before the west (remember: the earth rotates towards the east - so the east coast is getting heated by the sun before the west coast.  Hence, cooler air from the the west tends to travels towards the east.

…but more importantly…

b)  The air at the equator is traveling with the earth (which is spinning at 1000 MPH).  As that air heats up and rises, it moves northward (or southward), moving over regions of the earth which are rotating at a much slower speed (say 600 - 700 MPH).  Hence, the hot air at the equator ends up traveling faster than earth’s speed at locations away from the equator.

So there you have it...there are good, technical reasons for weather systems to travel from the west to the east across the entire earth systems. 

And it has nothing to do with good guacamole dip...but I think it helps.

Some references & reading to consider:

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jetstream/global/jet.htm