The Temperate Person's Guide to Phoenix, Arizona Quiz

Answer: Valley of the Sun

The Phoenix metropolitan area (Phoenix, Mesa, Glendale) can make a real claim to being called "Valley of the Sun"; the area receives an average of 295 sunny days per year, compared to a national average of 205 days.

Answer: Sonoran

The Sonoran Desert covers parts of Arizona, southern California and northwestern Mexico, including Baja California. The Saguaro and Organ Pipe cacti are endemic to the area.

Answer: less than once a decade

Phoenix residents may see snow less than once a decade, on average. Between 1986 and 2009 there was no measurable snowfall. On one day in 2010 and in 2013, graupel fell; it was believed to be snow, as opposed to soft hail, but the National Weather Service did not officially say so.

Answer: false

Phoenix hosts teams for all four major American professional sports (baseball, football, basketball and hockey) as well as auto racing, arena football, soccer, golf, a marathon and two college football bowl games. Name a sport and you can probably find it in Phoenix.

Answer: aqueducts

Two thousand years ago the Hohokam Native Americans set up irrigation canals in the area that would become Phoenix. They eventually left because of droughts and flooding. White people founded the city of Phoenix in 1867. At the beginning of World War II, Phoenix had about 65,000 residents. After the war civic leaders worked to attract businesses, which brought in people to work in the factories and buildings.

As water became scarce, plans were made to bring water in through aqueducts. The project was begun in 1968. Known as the Central Arizona Project, it is a 336 mi (541 km) diversion canal that brings water from Lake Havasu to the Phoenix area, utilizing some of the Hohokam canals.

Answer: South Mountain

Phoenix has plenty of land available. South Mountain Park is one example: it started with 13,000 acres (53 sq km) in 1924 and now comprises more than 16,000 acres (64.7 sq km), almost twenty times larger than New York City's Central Park. Most of the terrain has been left in its natural condition.

Answer: roll it outside between games

The university's stadium does have a retractable roof but the playing field is rolled outside except for soccer and American football events. The rolling tray the grass is planted on weighs 18.9 million pounds (8.57 million kg).

Answer: false

By one estimate, Phoenix is the buggiest place in the U.S. It based its ranking on the number of requests for services received by pest control companies in the area. Most desert areas in America have their share of creepy, crawling things and Phoenix has the requisite scorpions, cockroaches (20 species of them!), Africanized honey bees, earwigs - the list goes on and on. One reason given is the lack of killing winter temperatures in the Phoenix valley.

Answer: Heard Museum

Dwight and Maie Heard founded the museum in 1929 to house their personal collection of Native American artifacts. It has grown to over 40,000 items and is considered a living museum since besides the static displays there are classrooms for Native subjects, a library and performance spaces. It is over 130,000 sq ft (12,000 sq m) in size.

Answer: Cactus League

Fifteen major league teams train in and around Phoenix as part of the Cactus League, and have for over fifty years. The Grapefruit League is the name given to the Cactus League's counterpart in Florida.