Climate twins of Columbia, SD

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

Top match: Reynolds, ND

Month	Columbia			Reynolds
	High	Low	Precip	High	Low	Precip
January	21.5°F	0.4°F	0.47 in	17.9°F	1.0°F	0.55 in
February	26.4°F	4.5°F	0.44 in	22.5°F	4.2°F	0.59 in
March	39.3°F	17.7°F	0.87 in	35.9°F	19.5°F	1.20 in
April	55.2°F	31.1°F	1.77 in	53.0°F	33.7°F	1.39 in
May	68.2°F	44.8°F	3.41 in	67.7°F	45.8°F	2.77 in
June	77.8°F	55.7°F	3.59 in	77.0°F	57.3°F	3.65 in
July	83.1°F	59.9°F	3.62 in	81.3°F	61.1°F	3.43 in
August	81.4°F	56.9°F	2.62 in	80.2°F	58.4°F	2.59 in
September	72.9°F	46.9°F	2.38 in	71.3°F	49.7°F	2.16 in
October	57.5°F	33.0°F	2.11 in	55.2°F	36.8°F	2.21 in
November	40.7°F	19.3°F	0.68 in	38.2°F	22.3°F	0.86 in
December	26.9°F	7.3°F	0.50 in	23.7°F	9.4°F	0.91 in

Cities that consider Columbia their climate twin

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

Reynolds, ND (ranks Columbia #1)
Brandon, MN (ranks Columbia #2)

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 →