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Arkansas, AR

Arkansas is a state located in the southern
region of the United States of America. Arkansas shares a
border with six states, with its eastern border largely
defined by the Mississippi River.
Its diverse geography ranges from the
mountainous regions of the Ozarks and the Ouachita Mountains,
which make up the U.S. Interior Highlands, to the eastern
lowlands along the Mississippi River.
The capital and most populous city is Little
Rock. The name Arkansas is a French pronunciation of a Quapaw
word meaning "land of downriver people". The pronunciation "arkansaw"
was made official by an act of the state legislature in 1881.
Geography
The Mississippi River forms most of Arkansas'
eastern border, except in Clay and Greene counties where the
St. Francis River forms the western boundary of the Missouri
Bootheel, and in dozens of places where the current channel of
the Mississippi has meandered from where it had last been
legally specified.
Arkansas shares its southern border with
Louisiana, its northern border with Missouri, its eastern
border with Tennessee and Mississippi, and its western border
with Texas and Oklahoma. Arkansas is a land of mountains and
valleys, thick forests and fertile plains.
Northwest Arkansas is part of the Ozark Plateau
including the Boston Mountains, to the south are the Ouachita
Mountains and these regions are divided by the Arkansas River;
the southern and eastern parts of Arkansas are called the
Lowlands. All of these mountains ranges are part of the U.S.
Interior Highlands region, the only major mountainous region
between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains.
The so-called Lowlands are better known by
names of their two regions, the Delta and the Grand Prairie.
The Arkansas Delta is a flat landscape of rich alluvial soils
formed by repeated flooding of the adjacent Mississippi.
Further away from the river, in the southeast
portion of the state, the Grand Prairie consists of a more
undulating landscape. Both are fertile agricultural areas.
The Delta region is bisected by an unusual
geological formation known as Crowley's Ridge. A narrow band
of rolling hills, Crowley's Ridge rises from 250 to 500 feet
above the surrounding alluvial plain and underlies many of the
major towns of eastern Arkansas.
Arkansas is home to many caves, such as
Blanchard Springs Caverns. It is also the first U.S. state in
which diamonds were found (near Murfreesboro).
Climate
Arkansas generally has a humid subtropical
climate, which borders on humid continental in some northern
highland areas.
While not bordering the Gulf of Mexico,
Arkansas is still close enough to this warm, large body of
water for it to be the main weather influence in the state.
Generally, Arkansas has very hot, humid summers and mild,
slightly drier winters.
In Little Rock, the daily high temperatures
average around 90 °F (32 °C) in the summer and close to 50 °F
(10 °C) in winter. Annual precipitation throughout the state
averages between 40 and 50 inches (1,000 to 1,250 mm); getting
gradually wetter as you go from west to east. Snowfall is not
uncommon, but certainly not excessive in most years as the
average snowfall is around 5 inches (13 cm).
Despite its subtropical climate, Arkansas is
known for occasional extreme weather. Between both the Great
Plains and the Gulf States, Arkansas receives around 60 days
of thunderstorms.
As a part of Tornado Alley, tornadoes are not
an uncommon occurrence in Arkansas, and a few of the most
destructive tornadoes in U.S. history have struck the state.
While being sufficiently away from the coast to
be safe from a direct hit from a hurricane, Arkansas can often
get the remnants of a tropical system which dumps tremendous
amounts of rain in a short time and often spawns smaller
tornadoes.
This article is licensed under
the
GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the
Wikipedia
article "Arkansas".
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