Climate twins of Lancaster, MN

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

Top match: Grace City, ND

Month Lancaster Grace City
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 13.1°F -4.1°F 0.53 in 16.6°F -1.3°F 0.55 in
February 17.7°F -0.4°F 0.47 in 21.4°F 2.6°F 0.48 in
March 31.6°F 15.8°F 0.72 in 34.4°F 15.7°F 0.83 in
April 50.1°F 30.0°F 1.14 in 52.0°F 29.7°F 1.20 in
May 66.3°F 42.7°F 3.00 in 66.5°F 42.4°F 2.73 in
June 75.8°F 53.7°F 4.24 in 75.7°F 53.5°F 3.55 in
July 79.4°F 57.4°F 3.49 in 80.8°F 57.8°F 3.64 in
August 78.6°F 55.5°F 2.58 in 79.8°F 55.6°F 2.55 in
September 68.7°F 45.8°F 2.57 in 70.7°F 46.4°F 2.11 in
October 51.7°F 33.4°F 1.85 in 54.3°F 32.9°F 1.81 in
November 33.9°F 18.5°F 0.93 in 36.3°F 18.8°F 0.88 in
December 19.0°F 4.6°F 0.79 in 21.9°F 5.8°F 0.81 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 →