Climate twins of Colstrip, MT

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

Top match: Douglas, WY

Month Colstrip Douglas
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 35.8°F 13.5°F 0.65 in 39.0°F 12.4°F 0.56 in
February 37.1°F 15.1°F 0.69 in 40.0°F 12.8°F 0.74 in
March 47.1°F 23.9°F 0.95 in 50.1°F 23.2°F 1.06 in
April 55.4°F 31.9°F 1.92 in 57.7°F 30.0°F 1.88 in
May 64.9°F 41.9°F 3.14 in 67.6°F 38.9°F 2.69 in
June 74.9°F 50.8°F 2.48 in 79.6°F 48.6°F 1.70 in
July 85.0°F 57.2°F 1.42 in 87.9°F 55.3°F 1.30 in
August 84.0°F 55.2°F 1.03 in 86.3°F 52.6°F 0.97 in
September 73.4°F 45.8°F 1.43 in 75.7°F 42.6°F 1.20 in
October 58.1°F 33.7°F 1.44 in 60.5°F 30.4°F 1.39 in
November 45.9°F 23.6°F 0.69 in 48.7°F 21.0°F 0.56 in
December 36.6°F 15.3°F 0.56 in 38.7°F 12.6°F 0.46 in

Cities that consider Colstrip their climate twin

These US cities have Colstrip in their top 3 most-similar list — meaning if you were to move from any of these places, Colstrip would feel familiar.

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 →