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Maryland, MD

Maryland is a state located on the Atlantic
Coast in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States of
America.
It is comparable in size to the European
country of Belgium. According to the most recent information
provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, as of August 2007,
Maryland is now the wealthiest state in the United States,
with a median household income of $65,144, ahead of New Jersey
which had previously held that title.
It was the seventh state to ratify the United
States Constitution and bears two nicknames, the Old Line
State and the Free State.
Its history as a border state has led it to
exhibit characteristics of both the Northern and Southern
regions of the United States. As a general rule, the rural
areas of Maryland, such as Western, Southern, and Eastern
Maryland, are more Southern in culture, while
densely-populated Central Maryland — areas in the Baltimore
and the Washington Beltway Regions — exhibit more Northern
characteristics.
Maryland is a life sciences hub with over 350
biotechnology firms, making it the third-largest such cluster
in the nation.
Institutions and agencies located throughout
Maryland include University System of Maryland, Johns Hopkins
University, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health.
Geography
Maryland possesses a great variety of
topography, hence its nickname, "America in Miniature."
It ranges from sandy dunes dotted with seagrass
in the east, to low marshlands teeming with water snakes and
large bald cypress near the bay, to gently rolling hills of
oak forest in the Piedmont Region, and mountain pine groves in
the west.
Maryland is bounded on the north by
Pennsylvania, on the west by West Virginia, on the east by
Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean, and on the south, across the
Potomac River, by West Virginia and Virginia.
The mid-portion of this border is interrupted
on the Maryland side by Washington, DC, which sits on land
originally part of Maryland.
The Chesapeake Bay nearly bisects the state,
and the counties east of the bay are known collectively as the
Eastern Shore. Most of the state's waterways are part of the
Chesapeake Bay watershed, with the exception of a portion of
Garrett County drained by the Youghiogheny River, as part of
the watershed of the Mississippi River, the eastern half of
Worcester County, which drains into Maryland's Atlantic
Coastal Bays, and a small portion of the state's northeast
corner which drains into the Delaware River watershed.
So prominent is the Chesapeake in Maryland's
geography and economic life that there has been periodic
agitation to change the state's official nickname to the "Bay
State," a name currently used by Massachusetts.
The highest point in Maryland is Hoye Crest on
Backbone Mountain, which is in the southwest corner of Garrett
County, near the border with West Virginia and near the
headwaters of the North Branch of the Potomac River. In
western Maryland, about two-thirds of the way across the
state, is a point at which the state is only about 1 mile (2
km) wide.
This geographical curiosity, which makes
Maryland the narrowest state, is located near the small town
of Hancock, and results from Maryland's northern and southern
boundaries being marked by the Mason-Dixon Line and the
north-arching Potomac River, respectively.
Much of the Baltimore-Washington corridor lies
in the rolling hills of the Appalachian Piedmont. A quirk of
Maryland's geography is that the state contains no natural
lakes.
During the last Ice Age, glaciers did not reach
as far south as Maryland, and therefore did not carve out deep
natural lakes as exist in northern states.
There are numerous man-made lakes, the largest
being Deep Creek Lake, a reservoir in Garrett County.
Climate
Maryland has wide array of climates for a state
of its size. It depends on numerous variables, such as
proximity to water, elevation, and protection from northern
weather due to downslope winds.
The eastern half of Maryland lies on the
Atlantic Coastal Plain, with very flat topography and very
sandy or muddy soil.
This region has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen
Cfa), with hot, humid summers and a short, mild to cool
winter.
This region includes the cities of Salisbury,
Annapolis, Ocean City, and southern and eastern greater
Baltimore.
Beyond this region lies the Piedmont which lies
in the transition between the humid subtropical climate zone
and the humid continental climate zone (Köppen Dfa), with hot,
humid summers and moderately cold winters where significant
snowfall and significant subfreezing temperatures are an
annual occurrence.
Precipitation in the state is very generous, as
it is on most of the East Coast. Annual rainfall ranges from
40-45 inches (1000-1150 mm) in virtually every part of the
state, falling very evenly. Nearly every part of Maryland
receives 3.5-4.5 inches (95-110 mm) per month of
precipitation.
Snowfall varies from 9 inches (23 cm) in the
coastal areas to over 100 inches (250 cm) a winter in the
western mountains of the state.
Because of its location near the Atlantic
Coast, Maryland is somewhat vulnerable to tropical cyclones,
although the Delmarva Peninsula, and the outer banks of North
Carolina to the south provide a large buffer, such that a
strike from a major hurricane (category 3 or above) is not
very likely.
This article is licensed under
the
GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the
Wikipedia
article "Maryland".
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