Climate twins of Hays, KS

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

Top match: Freedom, OK

Month Hays Freedom
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 44.4°F 20.0°F 0.56 in 49.2°F 18.7°F 0.81 in
February 48.2°F 22.4°F 0.79 in 52.8°F 22.7°F 0.80 in
March 58.1°F 31.2°F 1.30 in 62.5°F 32.7°F 1.73 in
April 67.4°F 39.3°F 2.22 in 71.6°F 41.5°F 2.05 in
May 76.6°F 51.0°F 3.65 in 79.7°F 53.7°F 3.69 in
June 88.7°F 62.6°F 3.09 in 89.2°F 63.6°F 4.03 in
July 93.2°F 67.1°F 4.14 in 94.3°F 67.6°F 3.51 in
August 91.3°F 65.1°F 3.58 in 92.6°F 66.0°F 2.58 in
September 83.5°F 56.3°F 2.12 in 85.3°F 56.8°F 1.96 in
October 70.2°F 42.4°F 1.75 in 73.8°F 41.8°F 2.51 in
November 56.9°F 29.9°F 0.88 in 61.1°F 29.8°F 1.37 in
December 46.5°F 22.2°F 0.76 in 49.6°F 21.2°F 1.06 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 →