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Minnesota is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Slightly more than half of all Minnesota residents live in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, the center of transport, business and industry, and home to an internationally-known arts community. The remainder of the state, often referred to as Greater Minnesota, consists of western prairies now given over to intensive agriculture, eastern deciduous forests also heavily farmed and settled, and the less-populated northern boreal forest.
Minnesota borders Wisconsin on the east, and shares a water border in Lake Superior with Michigan. Iowa is to the south, North Dakota and South Dakota are west, and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Manitoba are north.
Much of the state is relatively flat, but pockmarked with lakes, having been eroded by glacial periods during the Ice Age. The state's average elevation is 1,200 feet. The high point is Eagle Mountain at 2,301 ft and a low of 602 ft at the surface of Lake Superior. The state is one of the most geologically stable regions in the country.
Minnesota has temperature extremes characteristic of its continental climate, with cold winters and mild to hot summers in the south and frigid winters and general cool summers in the north.
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