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".