Climate twins of Decorah, IA

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

Top match: Casey, IA

Month Decorah Casey
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 27.7°F 10.4°F 1.01 in 29.7°F 9.6°F 0.89 in
February 32.8°F 14.0°F 1.10 in 34.6°F 13.8°F 1.18 in
March 46.2°F 25.9°F 2.05 in 47.5°F 25.5°F 1.88 in
April 61.3°F 37.3°F 3.95 in 61.0°F 36.3°F 4.11 in
May 72.5°F 48.4°F 4.94 in 71.8°F 48.4°F 5.30 in
June 81.4°F 58.6°F 6.13 in 81.7°F 59.0°F 5.23 in
July 84.4°F 62.6°F 4.42 in 85.1°F 63.0°F 4.32 in
August 82.7°F 60.7°F 4.39 in 82.7°F 59.8°F 4.52 in
September 76.4°F 52.3°F 3.60 in 76.6°F 50.4°F 3.61 in
October 63.2°F 40.4°F 2.66 in 63.6°F 37.7°F 2.81 in
November 46.6°F 28.4°F 2.05 in 47.7°F 26.0°F 1.88 in
December 32.9°F 17.4°F 1.31 in 34.9°F 15.6°F 1.41 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 →