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Arizona, AZ

The State of Arizona is a state located in the
southwestern region of the United States of America. The
capital and largest city is Phoenix. The three next largest
cities are Tucson, Mesa and Glendale. Arizona was the 48th and
last of the contiguous states admitted to the Union on
February 14, 1912.
Arizona is noted for its desert climate,
exceptionally hot summers and mild winters, but the high
country in the north features pine forests and mountain ranges
which contrast with the lower deserts.
Arizona is one of the Four Corners states. It
borders New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, California, touches
Colorado, and has a 389 mi (626 km) international border with
the states of Sonora and Baja California in Mexico. Aside from
the Grand Canyon, many other National Forests, Parks,
Monuments, and Indian reservations are located in the state.
Geography
Arizona is located in the Western United States
as one of the Four Corners states. Arizona is the sixth
largest state in area, after New Mexico and before Nevada. Of
the state's 118,000 square miles (306,000 km²), approximately
15% is privately owned.
The remaining area is government forest and
park land, recreation areas and Native American reservations.
Arizona is best known for its desert landscape, which is rich
in xerophyte plants such as cactus. It is also known for its
climate, which presents exceptionally hot summers and mild
winters. Less well known is the pine-covered high country of
the Colorado Plateau in the north-central portion of the
state, which contrasts with the desertic Basin and Range
region in the southern portions of the state.
Like other states of the Southwest, Arizona has
an abundance of topographical characteristics in addition to
its desert climate. More than half of the state features
mountains and plateaus and contains the largest stand of
Ponderosa pine in the United States.
The Mogollon Rim, a 2000-foot (600 m)
escarpment, cuts across the central section of the state and
marks the southwestern edge of the Colorado Plateau, where the
state experienced its worst forest fire ever in 2002. Arizona
belongs firmly within the Basin and Range region of North
America.
The region was shaped by prehistoric volcanism,
followed by a cooling-off and related subsidence. The entire
region is slowly sinking. The Grand Canyon is a colorful,
steep-sided gorge, carved by the Colorado River, in northern
Arizona. The canyon is one of the seven natural wonders of the
world and is largely contained in the Grand Canyon National
Park—one of the first national parks in the United States.
President Theodore Roosevelt was a major
proponent of designating the Grand Canyon area, visiting on
numerous occasions to hunt mountain lion and enjoy the
scenery. The Canyon was created by the Colorado River cutting
a channel over millions of years, and is about 277 miles (446
km) long, ranges in width from 4 to 18 miles (6 to 29
kilometers) and attains a depth of more than 1 mile (1.6 km).
Nearly 2 billion years of the Earth's history
has been exposed as the Colorado River and its tributaries cut
through layer after layer of sediment as the Colorado Plateaus
have uplifted.
Arizona is home to one of the largest and most
well-preserved meteorite impact sites in the world. The
Barringer Meteorite Crater (better known simply as "Meteor
Crater") is a gigantic hole in the middle of the high plains
of the Colorado Plateau, about 25 miles (40 km) west of
Winslow.
A rim of smashed and jumbled boulders, some of
them the size of small houses, rises 150 feet (46 m) above the
level of the surrounding plain. The crater itself is nearly a
mile wide, and 570 feet (174 m) deep.
Arizona does not observe Daylight Saving Time,
except in the Navajo Nation, located in the northeastern
region of the state.
Climate
Due to its large area and variations in
elevation, the state has a wide variety of localized climate
conditions.
In the lower elevations, the climate is
primarily desert, with mild winters and hot summers.
Typically, from late fall to early spring, the weather is
mild, averaging a minimum of 60 degrees Fahrenheit (15 °C).
November through February are the coldest
months with temperatures typically ranging from 40–75 °F (4–24
°C), although occasional frosts are not uncommon.
About midway through February, the temperatures
start to rise again with warm days, and cool breezy nights.
The summer months of May through August bring a
dry heat ranging from 90–120 °F (32–48 °C), with occasional
high temperatures exceeding 125 °F (52 °C) having been
observed in the desert area. Due to the primarily dry climate,
large temperature swings often occur between day and night,
with some as large as 50 °F (28 °C) in the summer months.
However, the northern third of Arizona is a
plateau at significantly higher altitudes than the lower
desert, and has an appreciably cooler climate, with cold
winters and mild summers.
Extreme cold temperatures are not unknown; cold
air systems from the northern states and Canada occasionally
push into the state, bringing temperatures below 0 °F (–18 °C)
to the higher parts of the state. Arizona has an average
annual rainfall of 12.7 inches (322 mm),which comes during two
rainy seasons, with cold fronts coming from the Pacific Ocean
during the winter and a monsoon in the summer.
The monsoon season occurs from the middle of
July through August and brings lightning, thunderstorms, wind,
and torrential, if usually brief, downpours.
It is rare for tornadoes and hurricanes to
occur in Arizona, but there are records of both occurring.
Indicative of the variation in climate, Arizona
is the state which has both the metropolitan area with the
most days over 100 °F (37.8 °C) (Phoenix), and the
metropolitan area in the lower 48 states with nearly the most
days with a low temperature below freezing (Flagstaff).
This article is licensed under
the
GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the
Wikipedia
article "Arizona".
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