Climate twins of Madison, SD
These are the US cities whose 12-month climate pattern most closely matches Madison'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: Madison vs its climate twin
Top match: Howard Lake, MN
| Month | Madison | Howard Lake | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | Low | Precip | High | Low | Precip | |
| January | 23.7°F | 5.0°F | 0.46 in | 21.0°F | 2.0°F | 0.58 in |
| February | 28.5°F | 9.5°F | 0.66 in | 26.0°F | 5.8°F | 0.85 in |
| March | 41.2°F | 21.5°F | 1.03 in | 39.0°F | 19.3°F | 1.38 in |
| April | 55.6°F | 33.4°F | 2.70 in | 54.8°F | 33.8°F | 2.70 in |
| May | 68.1°F | 45.9°F | 3.74 in | 68.4°F | 47.1°F | 3.97 in |
| June | 78.2°F | 56.6°F | 4.24 in | 77.9°F | 58.1°F | 4.42 in |
| July | 83.3°F | 60.9°F | 3.33 in | 82.3°F | 62.0°F | 3.49 in |
| August | 80.9°F | 58.4°F | 3.38 in | 79.9°F | 59.5°F | 3.43 in |
| September | 73.1°F | 49.6°F | 3.21 in | 73.1°F | 50.6°F | 3.30 in |
| October | 58.7°F | 35.7°F | 2.16 in | 58.1°F | 37.1°F | 2.47 in |
| November | 42.2°F | 22.6°F | 0.85 in | 40.8°F | 23.4°F | 1.25 in |
| December | 28.7°F | 11.0°F | 0.61 in | 26.4°F | 10.9°F | 0.85 in |
Cities that consider Madison their climate twin
These US cities have Madison in their top 3 most-similar list — meaning if you were to move from any of these places, Madison would feel familiar.
- Dassel, MN (ranks Madison #3)
- Flensburg, MN (ranks Madison #2)
- Randall, MN (ranks Madison #2)
- Danube, MN (ranks Madison #3)
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 →