While you may imagine Arizona as a vast desert with a giant canyon slicing through it, its climate is, in fact, quite diverse, with three distinct physiographic regions. The desert climate of Arizona is in the southwestern part of the state and along the west where Arizona borders Nevada and California. To the north-northeast, the geological region of the Colorado Plateau is home to ancient volcanic mountains, plateaus and the Grand Canyon, spanning the Four Corners region of Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado. Between the deserts of the south and the plateaus of the north is a thin strip of rugged mountain ranges called the Central Highlands, a region characterized by lower temperatures and higher annual rainfalls compared to the rest of the state.
