Climate twins of Letcher, SD

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

Top match: Pierre, SD

Month Letcher Pierre
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 28.6°F 9.3°F 0.40 in 29.0°F 9.3°F 0.45 in
February 32.7°F 13.4°F 0.37 in 33.7°F 12.6°F 0.74 in
March 45.4°F 24.3°F 0.93 in 45.7°F 22.9°F 0.96 in
April 58.7°F 35.1°F 2.07 in 58.5°F 33.3°F 1.93 in
May 70.8°F 47.8°F 3.15 in 69.5°F 44.9°F 3.25 in
June 81.2°F 58.5°F 3.51 in 80.0°F 55.6°F 3.69 in
July 86.7°F 63.9°F 2.36 in 88.3°F 61.6°F 2.39 in
August 83.9°F 60.5°F 3.14 in 86.6°F 59.4°F 1.95 in
September 76.8°F 51.0°F 2.34 in 77.5°F 49.7°F 1.74 in
October 61.7°F 37.8°F 1.83 in 60.7°F 36.2°F 1.69 in
November 45.6°F 24.2°F 0.55 in 44.9°F 23.2°F 0.77 in
December 31.9°F 14.1°F 0.49 in 32.4°F 13.2°F 0.64 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 →