Climate twins of Amherst, VA

These are the US cities whose 12-month climate pattern most closely matches Amherst's. Each "twin" must be at least 140 miles away to avoid trivial near-neighbor matches. Similarity is computed across all 24 monthly metrics (12 average temperatures + 12 average precipitations), normalized so temperature and precipitation contribute equally.

Side-by-side: Amherst vs its climate twin

Top match: Colonial Beach, VA

Month Amherst Colonial Beach
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 48.0°F 25.5°F 3.45 in 45.0°F 26.3°F 3.28 in
February 52.0°F 27.6°F 2.68 in 48.5°F 28.4°F 2.89 in
March 59.8°F 33.6°F 3.69 in 56.7°F 35.0°F 3.89 in
April 70.2°F 42.8°F 3.59 in 67.9°F 44.5°F 3.54 in
May 76.5°F 52.3°F 4.60 in 75.4°F 53.5°F 4.13 in
June 83.6°F 60.9°F 4.52 in 83.1°F 62.4°F 3.97 in
July 87.3°F 65.6°F 3.68 in 87.4°F 66.8°F 3.96 in
August 85.7°F 64.1°F 4.42 in 85.6°F 65.1°F 3.49 in
September 79.9°F 57.0°F 4.39 in 79.0°F 58.4°F 4.66 in
October 71.1°F 44.6°F 3.75 in 68.6°F 46.6°F 4.00 in
November 61.0°F 34.6°F 3.56 in 58.1°F 36.7°F 3.32 in
December 51.0°F 28.7°F 4.01 in 48.6°F 30.0°F 3.63 in

How this is computed

Each city is represented by a 24-dimensional vector: 12 monthly average temperatures and 12 monthly average precipitations. Each dimension is z-score normalized across the population of US cities, so that temperature variance and precipitation variance contribute proportionally. Distance between cities is Euclidean. We filter out cities within 2° latitude/longitude (~140 miles) so that "twins" mean climatically similar but geographically distinct — not just the neighboring town. Full methodology →