When I lived in NY it was NY, NJ and Ct. I assumed “tri-state” was a local term and was surprised to hear it when i travelled. (go ahead laugh)
In Delaware it was De., NJ, and Pa.
Now in Georgia it’s Ga., Tn., and Al.
What’s yours?
In NW Kentucky it was KY, IN and IL. (Did I get the abbreviations right? Too late to be bothered to google.) I too thought it was a quaint local thing special to that area where I was staying a few years back. I was pretty disappointed when I slowly picked up - through the dope - that it wasn’t really special at all.
“If ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.”
No such thing as a tri-state area here. We only touch one state, and that’s far away.
I live in New Mexico way out west where the states are too large to form any kind of collective geographical or meteorological region. Instead, we have what is called “The Four Corners” area where the northwestern corner of New Mexico, the northeastern corner of Arizona, the southeastern corner of Utah, and the southwestern corner of Colorado come together to form a perfect “+”
The only time I ever hear it mentioned is in the context of weather conditions.
There is a monument at the site where the four states converge.
'Round here it’s considered Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin
In VT, the TriState area was VT, NH, and Maine. Yeah, two fo them don’t touch, but that’s because the “Tri-State Megabucks” (the biggest lotto in the area until Powerball came a few years ago) was for VT, NH, and Maine. 
I’m in Northern NY now, and there is no “tri-state” area. The cloest state is VT, and after that…I guess MA at three and a half hours.
1968 - '79: IL/IN/WI
'79 - '83: NY/NJ/CT
'83 - '88: LA/MS
'88 - present: VA/MD/DC
I’m in the middle of Ontario, which is much too large to let me be near any multiple borders. The nearest we have to a tri-state area with any sort of largeish population is where southeastern Ontario abuts Quebec and New York state.
On the other hand, Ontario adjoins Quebec, Nunavut, Manitoba, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. Almost all of those, except for Manitoba and two parts of the Quebec boundary, are boundaries over water. That’s got to be close to some sort of NAFTA record on number of state/province boundaries…
I’m about midway between NYC and Montreal.
I suppose mine would be NY, VT, MA.
I don’t think we have one here in LA, But back in Ohio it would depend on what part of the state you were in, It would be Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky or Ohio Kentucky Pennsylvania or Ohio Indiana Michigan. I was right in the middle so it was whichever I wanted to use it as at that moment.
Up in the PNW, it’s Or., Wa., Id.
Currently I live in the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut tri-state area, but within a couple months I’m moving to Boston, which I guess would put me in the Massachusetts/New Hampshire/Rhode Island tri-state area. Or maybe Massachusetts/New Hampshire/Maine. Or something. The don’t seem to use the term there. However, considering that I’ll most likely take more trips to Rhode Island and New Hampshire than to any other state while I’m there, I guess that would be the tri-state area for me.
I grew up in Pennsylvania, right on the Ohio border, so we had more of a bi-state area, I guess. All our TV stations and much of our radio came from Ohio (except for the Pittsburgh stations, which came in fuzzy.) If it had to be a tri-state area, I guess you could consider my hometown of Hermitage, PA in the Pennsylvania/Ohio/West Virginia tri-state, but New York state was about as close as West Virginia, so that might make it up, or maybe give us an effective quad-state area… nah, it was a bi-state area, but no one ever called it that. Frankly, I don’t see why much of western Pennsylvania isn’t ceded to Ohio, anyway, but that’s another thread altogether, and probably not a very interesting one…
When I lived in Memphis it was Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas. Now I don’t have one because D.C. isn’t a state.
–Cliffy
I think of them as VT/NH/ME if I am thinking travel and the country, and VT/NH/MA if thinking more into civilization.
Pennsylvania/Ohio/West Virginia.
Bah, I of course meant, Ohio Pennsylvania and W Virginia.
There’s also WV, MD, and PA.
Well, I’ve seen “Ark-La-Tex” (Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas) and Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico groupings. I think I’ve also seen Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas grouped together before. But here in the central-ish area of Texas, the nearest dozen or so counties comprise the common regional unit for most purposes.
Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.
Tennessee and Missouri share the distinction of bordering the most states. Tennessee is long and skinny with just over 100 miles north to south and almost 600 east to west. Depending on which section of Tennessee one lives in, the tri-state area can range from TN-MS-AL to TN-AL-GA on the southern border to TN-GA-NC and TN-NC-VA on the east to TN-VA-KY on the northeast to TN-KY-MO and TN-MO-AR on the northwest and west. None of these really jumps to mind as a dominant tri-state grouping.
Here in Middle Tennessee, I guess the TV coverage areas would think of North Alabama, Middle Tennessee and Southern Kentucky as sort of a tri-state group.
When I lived in central Alabama, I suppose if there was a tri-state area, it would be GA-AL-MS. Tennessee was too far north and the Florida panhandle was not all that significant. The Deep South nature of GA-AL-MS, even with two different time zones, probably was more defining.
In short, I believe neither Tennessee nor Alabama residents think in terms of tri-state areas. Tri-cities would be another matter. Both Tennessee and Alabama have their tri-cities, and in both cases it really ought to be four and not three!