Michigan  is a Midwestern state of the United States of America. It was named after Lake Michigan, whose name is a French adaptation of the Ojibwe term mishigama, meaning "large water" or "large lake".

   Michigan, has the longest freshwater shoreline of any political subdivision in the world, being bounded by four of the five Great Lakes, plus Lake Saint Clair. Michigan has 64,980 inland lakes. A person in the state is never more than six miles from a natural water source, or more than 87.2 miles from Great Lakes coastline.

   Michigan is the only state to consist entirely of two peninsulas. 

   Michigan has a humid continental climate, although there are two distinct regions. The southern and central parts of the Lower Peninsula (south of Saginaw Bay and from the Grand Rapids area southward) have a warmer climate, with hot summers and cold winters. The northern part of Lower Peninsula and the entire Upper Peninsula has a more severe climate, with warm, but shorter summers and longer, cold to very cold winters.   
   The entire state averages 30 days of thunderstorm activity per year. These can be severe, especially in the southern part of the state. The state averages 17 tornadoes per year, which are more common in the extreme southern portion of the state. Portions of the southern border have been nearly as vulnerable historically as parts of Tornado Alley. Farther north, in the Upper Peninsula, tornadoes are rare.