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Mississippi,
MS

Mississippi is a state located in the southern
region of the United States of America. The state takes its
name from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western
boundary.
Mississippi is heavily forested, with over half
of the state's area covered by wild trees (mostly pine trees,
but Mississippi has an abundance of other trees) (cottonwood,
elm, hickory, oak, pecan, sweet gum, and tupelo). Lumber is a
prevalent industry in Mississippi.
Geography
Mississippi is bordered on the north by the
state of Tennessee, on the east by Alabama, on the south by
Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico, and on the west by Louisiana
and Arkansas (across the Mississippi River).
Major rivers include Mississippi River, Big
Black River, Pearl River, Yazoo River, Pascagoula River, and
Tombigbee River. Major lakes include Ross Barnett Reservoir,
Arkabutla Lake, Sardis Lake, and Grenada Lake.
The highest point in Mississippi, part of the
foothills of the Cumberland Mountains is Woodall Mountain.
Hardly a mountain, Woodall Mountain is only 806
feet (246 m) above sea level. The lowest point is along the
shore at the Gulf of Mexico; sea level.
The Mean Elevation is 300 feet (91 m) above sea
level. Most of Mississippi is part of the East Gulf Coastal
Plain, and the rest of the state is made up of a section of
the Mississippi Alluvial Plain.
The East Gulf Coastal Plain is generally
composed of low hills, such as the Pine Hills in the south and
the North Central Hills. Somewhat higher elevations are in the
Pontotoc Ridge and the Fall Line Hills in the northeast.
Yellow-brown loess soil is in the west, and a
region of fertile black earth, part of the Black Belt, is in
the northeast.
The coastline, which includes large bays at Bay
Saint Louis, Biloxi, and Pascagoula, is separated from the
Gulf of Mexico proper by the shallow Mississippi Sound, which
is partially enclosed by Petit Bois, Horn, Ship, and Cat
islands.
The Mississippi Alluvial Plain, known also as
the Mississippi Delta, is narrow in the south and widens north
of Vicksburg.
The region has rich soil, partly made up of
silt deposited by floodwaters of the Mississippi River.
Climate
Mississippi has a hot humid subtropical climate
with long summers and short, mild winters. Temperatures
average about 82 °F (about 28 °C) in July and about 48 °F
(about 9 °C) in January.
The temperature varies little across the state
in summer, but in winter the region near Mississippi Sound is
significantly warmer than most of the rest of the state.
The recorded temperature in Mississippi has
ranged from -19 °F (-28.3 °C), in 1966, at Corinth in the
northeast, to 115 °F (46.1 °C), in 1930, at Holly Springs in
the north. Yearly precipitation generally increases from north
to south.
Thus, Clarksdale, in the northwest, gets about
50 inches (about 1,270 mm) of precipitation annually and
Biloxi, in the south, about 61 inches (about 1,550 mm). Small
amounts of snow fall in northern and central Mississippi,
although snow is not unheard of around the southern part of
the state.
In the late summer and the fall, the state
(especially the southern part) is often affected by hurricanes
moving north from the Gulf of Mexico, and occasionally
impacted by major hurricanes, which can be quite devastating
in coastal communities.
This article is licensed under
the
GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the
Wikipedia
article "Mississippi".
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