Large-scale circulation patterns are known to have important effects on winter precipitation and streamflow throughout the U.S. West, but research has not yet been extended to consider their effects on vegetation behavior. In the Southwest U.S., winter precipitation provides most of the annual-average moisture available for subsequent use by vegetation. This study compares area-average Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) anomalies for 8 ecological regions in Arizona and New Mexico to area-average precipitation anomalies, and to indices for 3 large-scale circulation patterns: the Southwest Trough, standard Pacific-North American (PNA), and a modified PNA. Comparisons are made using correlation analysis at varying temporal resolutions, from 1 to 5 months, and with varying lags, from 0 to 24 months. The strongest teleconnections with these circulation patterns varies, although both precipitation and vegetation activity are consistently most closely related to the Southwest Trough. There appears to be functional equivalence of winter precipitation effects on vegetation activity across all low-productivity ecoregions (high and low deserts), but regionally-varying effects in mountain and grassland environments. The larger spatial variability in circulation pattern effects on vegetation reflects the spatially variable effects of those patterns on surface climatology, as well as ecoregional variation in hydrologic mediation and energetics. The strongest lag response for vegetation is generally 5-6 months (ie., summer), but is 1-2 months (late winter-early spring) for the warmest ecoregions. Further, the most moisture-limited ecoregions show interannual persistence of vegetation response to wet winters, probably due to underlying ecosystem functionality (e.g., hydrologic controls, plant physiology)