Climate twins of Lead, SD
These are the US cities whose 12-month climate pattern most closely matches Lead'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: Lead vs its climate twin
Top match: Fredonia, WI
| Month | Lead | Fredonia | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | Low | Precip | High | Low | Precip | |
| January | 38.3°F | 17.7°F | 1.54 in | 27.1°F | 11.2°F | 1.43 in |
| February | 38.8°F | 17.6°F | 1.83 in | 30.7°F | 13.4°F | 1.32 in |
| March | 47.1°F | 24.6°F | 2.24 in | 39.8°F | 23.4°F | 1.99 in |
| April | 53.8°F | 31.3°F | 3.54 in | 51.6°F | 33.4°F | 3.57 in |
| May | 63.2°F | 40.6°F | 4.90 in | 63.2°F | 43.6°F | 3.71 in |
| June | 74.2°F | 50.0°F | 3.81 in | 74.0°F | 53.5°F | 3.86 in |
| July | 81.7°F | 56.7°F | 3.12 in | 79.5°F | 59.5°F | 3.52 in |
| August | 80.9°F | 55.2°F | 2.32 in | 78.0°F | 58.5°F | 3.26 in |
| September | 72.2°F | 47.0°F | 1.96 in | 71.4°F | 50.3°F | 2.75 in |
| October | 57.4°F | 35.2°F | 3.32 in | 58.4°F | 39.3°F | 2.70 in |
| November | 46.0°F | 25.4°F | 1.70 in | 44.3°F | 28.1°F | 1.96 in |
| December | 38.1°F | 18.5°F | 1.51 in | 32.6°F | 17.9°F | 1.81 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 →