Climate twins of Bakersfield, CA

These are the US cities whose 12-month climate pattern most closely matches Bakersfield'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.

Rank 1 closest
Yucca Valley, CA
similarity distance: 1.226 (lower = more similar)
Rank 2 closest
Desert Hot Springs, CA
similarity distance: 1.646 (lower = more similar)
Rank 3 closest
Kingman, AZ
similarity distance: 1.683 (lower = more similar)

Side-by-side: Bakersfield vs its climate twin

Top match: Yucca Valley, CA

Month Bakersfield Yucca Valley
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 58.1°F 38.9°F 1.27 in 58.0°F 37.6°F 1.41 in
February 63.6°F 41.2°F 1.28 in 60.8°F 38.5°F 1.22 in
March 69.4°F 45.1°F 1.24 in 67.2°F 39.9°F 0.78 in
April 74.5°F 49.3°F 0.62 in 73.4°F 46.5°F 0.25 in
May 82.7°F 56.6°F 0.32 in 82.1°F 52.0°F 0.06 in
June 91.0°F 63.9°F 0.01 in 90.9°F 59.4°F 0.00 in
July 97.4°F 70.0°F 0.02 in 96.4°F 65.7°F 0.46 in
August 96.0°F 68.7°F 0.00 in 95.6°F 67.8°F 0.17 in
September 90.9°F 63.7°F 0.11 in 89.4°F 60.4°F 0.15 in
October 80.1°F 53.9°F 0.22 in 79.7°F 49.9°F 0.61 in
November 67.0°F 44.0°F 0.53 in 66.4°F 40.8°F 0.27 in
December 58.9°F 37.7°F 1.03 in 58.3°F 34.1°F 0.87 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 →