From San Francisco to Manhattan, Aspen to the Florida Keys, there is more to see and do in the United States than one can imagine. A USA holiday offers attractions for the whole family, among them swimming, snorkeling amd surfing off the beaches in California, going to museums and the opera in New York, Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Canyoneering in Utah, hiking and skiing in Colorado, or rodeos in Wyoming.
Additionally, some would say that:
Hawaii ranks as no. 1 in honeymoon desirability — and deserves its first-place status. Beautiful beaches and hidden coves; world-class hotels; fresh, inventive cuisine; watersports galore; extraordinary natural beauty; and perfect weather make this an ideal vacation spot year after year.
Coming in second, Las Vegas is America's adult fun capital, with 24-hour excitement.
Third in popularity among romantics, Florida offers coast-to-coast beaches. From the festive atmosphere of Miami and the Keys, to upscale Palm Beach and Boca Raton, to Walt Disney World in Orlando, to the action in Daytona and Cape Kennedy, it's one state that offers something for all couples who enjoy warm weather..
It would be nearly impossible to give an overview of the American climate, as the USA is vast and as such has incredible variation and in some areas remarkable extremes. The southern states receive most of the heat while the further north you travel the cooler the country becomes. San Francisco, with its ocean mists, is claimed to have a climate ‘all of its own’.
The climate is mostly temperate, but tropical in Hawaii and Florida, arctic in Alaska, semiarid in the great plains west of the Mississippi River, and arid in the Great Basin of the southwest. Low winter temperatures in the northwest are ameliorated occasionally in January and February by warm chinook winds from the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains
In the higher elevations of the Rocky Mountains as well as other mountain ranges, winters are generally very cold and snowy, while summers are characterized by warm, dry days and cold nights.
The whole of the USA is at a much more southerly latitude than Britain. For example, New York City is at approximately the same latitude as Rome, Italy, and Los Angeles roughly the same as Casablanca in Morocco.
In North America, clouds deposit most of their rain on the coastal mountains and the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges. This means that the regions to the east of these mountain ranges do not receive much rainfall or cloud cover. The same effect applies to regions east of the Rocky Mountains. The frequent lack of cloud cover means that large areas of the interior of the North American continent tend to experience very hot summers and very cold winters.
Please see the NOAA National Weather Service for current weather conditions.
The USA borders both the North Atlantic Ocean and the North Pacific Ocean, between Canada and Mexico,with geographic coordinates of 38 00 N, 97 00 W.
The total area of the US is 9,826,630 sq km, with 9,161,923 sq km of land, 664,707 sq km of water, and 19,924 km of coastline. It is about half the size of Russia and almost two and a half times the size of the European Union.
The terrain consists of a vast central plain, mountains in west, hills and low mountains in east; rugged mountains and broad river valleys in Alaska; rugged, and volcanic topography in Hawaii. The lowest point is Death Valley -86 m, and the highest point is Mount McKinley 6,194 m.