Climate twins of Florence, SD

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

Top match: Nelson, MN

Month Florence Nelson
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 21.4°F 1.5°F 0.65 in 19.0°F 2.3°F 0.38 in
February 26.2°F 5.1°F 0.69 in 23.7°F 6.0°F 0.41 in
March 38.3°F 18.2°F 1.10 in 36.6°F 19.4°F 1.00 in
April 54.0°F 30.8°F 2.27 in 52.4°F 32.7°F 2.04 in
May 67.1°F 44.8°F 2.70 in 66.3°F 45.5°F 3.05 in
June 76.4°F 54.9°F 3.18 in 75.7°F 56.4°F 3.72 in
July 81.7°F 59.8°F 3.59 in 80.2°F 60.9°F 4.00 in
August 79.9°F 56.3°F 2.66 in 78.3°F 58.7°F 3.46 in
September 72.1°F 46.2°F 2.74 in 69.9°F 50.1°F 2.63 in
October 57.3°F 34.2°F 2.33 in 54.5°F 37.0°F 2.21 in
November 40.9°F 20.8°F 0.83 in 37.6°F 23.0°F 0.83 in
December 27.1°F 9.1°F 0.70 in 24.2°F 9.6°F 0.36 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 →