Climate twins of Essex, IA

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

Top match: Reynolds, NE

Month Essex Reynolds
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 33.4°F 13.7°F 0.92 in 36.1°F 14.1°F 0.77 in
February 38.7°F 18.0°F 1.21 in 41.1°F 17.7°F 0.96 in
March 51.6°F 29.3°F 2.06 in 53.1°F 27.5°F 1.70 in
April 63.7°F 39.9°F 3.34 in 63.8°F 37.6°F 2.96 in
May 73.8°F 52.5°F 6.16 in 73.6°F 49.3°F 5.10 in
June 83.3°F 63.1°F 5.53 in 83.8°F 60.0°F 5.00 in
July 86.9°F 66.7°F 4.36 in 88.4°F 64.8°F 4.33 in
August 85.2°F 64.0°F 3.77 in 86.4°F 62.5°F 3.55 in
September 79.0°F 54.5°F 3.02 in 79.5°F 53.2°F 3.10 in
October 66.3°F 41.6°F 2.84 in 66.9°F 40.2°F 2.39 in
November 50.7°F 29.4°F 1.76 in 52.0°F 27.7°F 1.45 in
December 37.9°F 19.1°F 1.40 in 39.8°F 18.2°F 1.08 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 →