Oklahoma

Oklahoma is a transition state, the place where the wooded, humid South gives way to the dry, open West. Its eastern edge is green and hilly — the Ozark and Ouachita highlands, forests, and lakes — while the west flattens and dries into the southern Great Plains, ending in the long, arid finger of the Panhandle reaching toward New Mexico. Rainfall drops steadily from the soggy southeast to the near-desert northwest, so the state holds nearly every Plains climate in one outline.

This is the southern heart of Tornado Alley, where moist Gulf air collides with dry continental air to spawn some of the most violent storms on Earth. Black Mesa, the high point at 4,973 feet (1,516 m), stands at the tip of the Panhandle, a volcanic tableland far from the rest of the state. Oklahoma also holds the largest Native American population of any state, the legacy of removals that made it Indian Territory. Oklahoma City and Tulsa anchor a state built on oil, agriculture, and the meeting of regions.