Climate twins of Fairfax, IA

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

Top match: Lake Mills, WI

Month Fairfax Lake Mills
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 27.9°F 11.3°F 0.95 in 26.8°F 11.4°F 1.41 in
February 32.6°F 15.5°F 1.22 in 31.1°F 14.1°F 1.52 in
March 46.3°F 26.8°F 1.99 in 43.2°F 24.6°F 2.03 in
April 60.1°F 37.6°F 3.56 in 57.0°F 35.9°F 3.59 in
May 71.1°F 49.5°F 4.25 in 69.5°F 47.7°F 4.39 in
June 80.1°F 59.7°F 5.56 in 79.8°F 58.4°F 5.11 in
July 82.8°F 62.7°F 4.41 in 83.5°F 62.4°F 4.37 in
August 81.2°F 60.4°F 4.07 in 81.0°F 60.6°F 4.50 in
September 74.7°F 51.9°F 3.40 in 74.0°F 51.7°F 3.47 in
October 61.5°F 39.9°F 2.91 in 60.8°F 40.2°F 2.82 in
November 46.2°F 27.7°F 2.00 in 45.2°F 28.5°F 2.12 in
December 33.3°F 17.1°F 1.59 in 32.3°F 18.0°F 1.65 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 →