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".