Climate twins of Hill City, SD

These are the US cities whose 12-month climate pattern most closely matches Hill City'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.

Rank 1 closest
Stanford, MT
similarity distance: 1.705 (lower = more similar)
Rank 2 closest
Grass Range, MT
similarity distance: 1.733 (lower = more similar)
Rank 3 closest
Lewistown, MT
similarity distance: 1.763 (lower = more similar)

Side-by-side: Hill City vs its climate twin

Top match: Stanford, MT

Month Hill City Stanford
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 40.5°F 9.6°F 0.40 in 38.0°F 15.5°F 0.57 in
February 40.8°F 10.1°F 0.65 in 38.1°F 16.0°F 0.48 in
March 49.0°F 19.1°F 1.12 in 46.0°F 22.7°F 0.86 in
April 55.8°F 26.3°F 2.46 in 54.1°F 29.9°F 1.90 in
May 64.8°F 36.6°F 4.15 in 63.0°F 38.2°F 3.10 in
June 75.4°F 45.2°F 3.43 in 71.1°F 46.0°F 3.00 in
July 82.8°F 50.7°F 3.55 in 81.6°F 52.3°F 1.70 in
August 81.8°F 48.3°F 2.34 in 81.1°F 51.5°F 1.61 in
September 73.8°F 38.5°F 1.54 in 71.0°F 43.5°F 1.50 in
October 59.8°F 27.9°F 1.65 in 57.3°F 32.8°F 1.31 in
November 48.6°F 17.8°F 0.59 in 45.1°F 23.0°F 0.69 in
December 40.7°F 10.2°F 0.49 in 37.5°F 16.0°F 0.60 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 →