Tucson is located in the southern area of Arizona, in the county of Pima. The Tucson Metropolitan Area is spread out in a basin surrounded by mountains. The most important are the Santa Catalina in the north, the Rincon mountain in the east, the Tucson mountain in the west and the Santa Rita in the south.
This plateau lies about 792m above sea level, which brings a slightly colder climate than that of Phoenix, the capital of Arizona. The climate of Tucson is semi-arid, the city being located in the northern part of the Sonoran Desert. The metropolis receives 30cm of rain in a normal year and the wettest period is the summer monsoon (July to September).
Today, the metropolitan area of Tucson is very extensive. The only city in Tucson is more than five times larger than Paris with a density about 25 times smaller. Tucson belongs to a growth corridor (from the north of Phoenix to the Mexican border) if one considers Tucson as a metropolis today it gathers about 1 million inhabitants, distributed in the semi-arid desert of Sonora.