Climate twins of Fairfax, SD

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: Brandon, SD

Month Fairfax Brandon
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 31.3°F 10.7°F 0.40 in 27.2°F 8.5°F 0.60 in
February 35.5°F 13.7°F 0.73 in 32.0°F 12.6°F 0.83 in
March 46.8°F 22.6°F 1.42 in 45.0°F 24.3°F 1.60 in
April 57.9°F 33.6°F 3.10 in 59.0°F 35.5°F 3.00 in
May 69.1°F 45.2°F 4.30 in 70.8°F 47.5°F 3.86 in
June 79.8°F 57.1°F 3.90 in 80.9°F 58.8°F 4.23 in
July 86.5°F 61.8°F 3.16 in 85.3°F 63.4°F 3.25 in
August 84.8°F 60.1°F 2.79 in 82.8°F 61.1°F 3.34 in
September 76.4°F 50.7°F 2.91 in 75.6°F 51.9°F 2.73 in
October 61.9°F 37.4°F 1.97 in 61.1°F 38.1°F 2.36 in
November 46.8°F 24.2°F 0.92 in 45.0°F 24.5°F 1.22 in
December 34.1°F 14.7°F 0.33 in 31.6°F 13.4°F 0.83 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 →