Climate twins of Brookings, SD

These are the US cities whose 12-month climate pattern most closely matches Brookings'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: Brookings vs its climate twin

Top match: Spencer, WI

Month Brookings Spencer
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 22.2°F 3.5°F 0.43 in 22.7°F 6.8°F 0.73 in
February 26.9°F 7.4°F 0.50 in 27.1°F 9.8°F 0.51 in
March 39.1°F 19.9°F 1.06 in 39.4°F 21.5°F 1.25 in
April 54.1°F 32.1°F 2.17 in 53.9°F 33.4°F 2.24 in
May 66.8°F 45.2°F 3.45 in 67.0°F 45.0°F 2.98 in
June 76.8°F 56.3°F 4.29 in 75.5°F 54.9°F 3.83 in
July 81.4°F 60.1°F 3.61 in 79.6°F 58.4°F 3.04 in
August 79.3°F 57.4°F 3.22 in 77.8°F 56.7°F 3.20 in
September 72.0°F 48.2°F 3.10 in 70.0°F 48.7°F 3.03 in
October 57.6°F 34.2°F 1.97 in 56.1°F 36.9°F 2.02 in
November 41.0°F 21.5°F 0.80 in 40.8°F 25.3°F 1.21 in
December 27.5°F 9.7°F 0.61 in 27.8°F 13.5°F 0.90 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 →