Climate twins of Custer, SD

These are the US cities whose 12-month climate pattern most closely matches Custer'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
Grass Range, MT
similarity distance: 1.273 (lower = more similar)
Rank 2 closest
Stanford, MT
similarity distance: 1.325 (lower = more similar)
Rank 3 closest
Winifred, MT
similarity distance: 1.506 (lower = more similar)

Side-by-side: Custer vs its climate twin

Top match: Grass Range, MT

Month Custer Grass Range
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 37.1°F 16.2°F 0.36 in 37.2°F 14.2°F 0.68 in
February 37.2°F 16.1°F 0.70 in 38.8°F 15.7°F 0.51 in
March 45.6°F 24.0°F 0.92 in 48.2°F 23.0°F 0.87 in
April 51.3°F 30.5°F 2.24 in 57.1°F 30.7°F 1.85 in
May 61.2°F 40.5°F 3.53 in 66.0°F 39.5°F 3.39 in
June 72.3°F 49.6°F 3.43 in 74.0°F 47.4°F 3.22 in
July 79.7°F 56.3°F 3.16 in 83.3°F 52.9°F 1.70 in
August 78.7°F 54.6°F 2.43 in 82.7°F 51.9°F 1.67 in
September 70.9°F 46.0°F 1.53 in 72.6°F 43.5°F 1.46 in
October 55.7°F 33.7°F 1.45 in 58.9°F 33.4°F 1.25 in
November 44.9°F 23.7°F 0.55 in 46.3°F 22.7°F 0.71 in
December 36.5°F 16.6°F 0.36 in 37.7°F 15.2°F 0.55 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 →