Climate twins of Howard, SD

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

Top match: Royal, IA

Month Howard Royal
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 29.1°F 4.6°F 0.63 in 25.8°F 8.1°F 0.25 in
February 34.1°F 9.0°F 0.67 in 30.3°F 12.6°F 0.43 in
March 46.8°F 20.8°F 1.37 in 43.6°F 24.8°F 1.44 in
April 61.0°F 31.8°F 2.68 in 58.9°F 35.5°F 2.82 in
May 72.5°F 44.8°F 3.88 in 70.9°F 47.9°F 3.83 in
June 82.3°F 55.8°F 3.70 in 80.9°F 58.7°F 4.01 in
July 87.3°F 60.2°F 3.51 in 84.5°F 62.3°F 3.84 in
August 84.9°F 57.6°F 2.89 in 81.9°F 59.2°F 3.29 in
September 77.4°F 48.4°F 2.96 in 75.8°F 50.2°F 3.21 in
October 62.6°F 35.1°F 2.35 in 61.3°F 37.4°F 2.22 in
November 46.9°F 21.3°F 1.02 in 44.6°F 24.7°F 1.07 in
December 33.1°F 10.2°F 0.69 in 30.7°F 13.6°F 0.42 in

Cities that consider Howard their climate twin

These US cities have Howard in their top 3 most-similar list — meaning if you were to move from any of these places, Howard would feel familiar.

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 →