United States of America - Geography and Climate
Deciduous vegetation and grasslands prevail in the east, transitioning to prairies, boreal forests, and the Rocky Mountains in the west, and deserts in the southwest. In the northeast, the coasts of the Great Lakes and Atlantic seaboard host much of the country's population.
The United States is the world's third largest country by land area, after Russia and Canada. It is bounded by the North Atlantic Ocean to the east, the North Pacific Ocean to the west, Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Canada to the north. Alaska also borders Canada, with the Pacific Ocean to its south and the Arctic Ocean to its north. The island state of Hawaii is situated in the Pacific, southwest of the North American mainland.
The U.S. has an extremely varied geography, particularly in the West. The eastern seaboard has a coastal plain which is widest in the south and narrows in the north. The coastal plain does not exist north of New Jersey, although there are glacial outwash plains on Long Island, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket. Beyond the coastal plain, the rolling hills of the piedmont region end at the Appalachian Mountains which rise above 6,000 feet (1,830 m) in North Carolina and New Hampshire. From the west slope of the Appalachians, the Interior Plains of the Midwest are relatively flat and are the location of the Great Lakes as well as the Mississippi-Missouri River, the world's fourth-longest river system. West of the Mississippi River, the Interior Plains slope uphill and blend into the vast and often featureless Great Plains. The abrupt rise of the Rocky Mountains at the western edge of the Great Plains, extends north to south across the continental U.S., reaching altitudes over 14,000 feet (4,270 m) in Colorado.
In the past, the Rocky Mountains had a higher level of volcanic activity; nowadays, the range only has one area of volcanism, Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, possibly the world's largest volcano. Dozens of high mountain ranges, salt flats such as the Bonneville Salt Flats, and valleys are found in the Great Basin region located west of the Rockies and east of the Sierra Nevada, which also has deep chasms, including the Snake River. At the southwestern end of the Great Basin, Death Valley lies below sea level. It is the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere and is situated near the Mojave Desert. North of the Great Basin and east of the Cascades in the Northwest is the Columbia River Plateau, a large igneous province shaped by one of the largest flood basalts ever to appear on Earth. It is marked by dark black rocks. Surrounding the Four Corners region lies the Colorado Plateau, named after the Colorado River, which flows through it. The Plateau is generally high in elevation, has highly eroded sandstone, and is a blood red in some locations with many national parks, such as Arches, Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon, and Zion.
West of the Great Basin, the Sierra Nevada mountain range has Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the coterminous U.S. Along the Pacific coast, the Coast Ranges and the volcanic Cascade Range extend from north to south across the country. Alaska has numerous mountain ranges, including Mount McKinley (Denali), the highest peak in North America. Numerous volcanoes can be found throughout the Alexander and Aleutian Islands extending south and west of the Alaskan mainland. The Hawaiian islands are tropical, volcanic islands extending over 1,500 miles (2,400 km), and consisting of six larger islands and another dozen smaller ones that are inhabited.
The climate of the U.S. is as varied as its landscape. In northern Alaska, tundra and arctic conditions predominate, and the temperature has fallen as low as minus 80 °F (-62 °C). On the other end of the spectrum, Death Valley, California once reached 134 °F (56.7 °C); the second-highest temperature ever recorded on Earth.
On average, the mountains of the western states receive the most snow and are among the snowiest places on Earth. The greatest annual snowfall level is at Mount Rainier, in Washington, at 680 inches (1,727.2 cm); the record there was 1,122 inches (2849.8 cm) in the winter of 1971-1972. Other places with significant snowfall outside the Cascade Range are the Wasatch Mountains, near the Great Salt Lake, and the Sierra Nevada, near Lake Tahoe. In the east, while snowfall does not approach western levels, the region near the Great Lakes and the mountains of the Northeast receive the most. Along the northwestern Pacific coast, rainfall is greater than anywhere else in the continental U.S., with Quinault Ranger in Washington having an average of 137.21 inches. Hawaii receives even more, with 460 inches measured annually on Mount Waialeale, in Kauai. The Mojave Desert, in the southwest, is home to the driest locale in the U.S.--Yuma Valley, Arizona, with an average of 2.63 inches of precipitation each year.
In central portions of the U.S., tornadoes are more common than anywhere else on Earth and touch down most commonly in the spring and summer. Deadly and destructive hurricanes occur almost every year along the Atlantic seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico. The Appalachian region and the Midwest experience the worst floods, though virtually no area in the U.S. is immune to flooding. The Southwest has the worst droughts; one is thought to have lasted over 500 years and to have decimated the Anasazi people.
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