Climate twins of Mellette, SD

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

Top match: Rothsay, MN

Month	Mellette			Rothsay
	High	Low	Precip	High	Low	Precip
January	22.1°F	1.4°F	0.57 in	18.2°F	-0.9°F	0.75 in
February	27.2°F	5.1°F	0.65 in	23.0°F	2.6°F	0.63 in
March	40.0°F	17.1°F	0.90 in	36.3°F	17.2°F	1.08 in
April	55.8°F	29.2°F	2.11 in	52.7°F	31.3°F	2.06 in
May	68.5°F	42.8°F	3.34 in	66.9°F	45.2°F	3.27 in
June	78.5°F	54.2°F	3.47 in	75.8°F	56.4°F	3.93 in
July	83.7°F	58.9°F	3.51 in	80.0°F	60.0°F	3.43 in
August	81.8°F	55.2°F	2.54 in	78.4°F	58.1°F	2.72 in
September	73.8°F	45.1°F	2.35 in	70.3°F	48.8°F	2.75 in
October	58.5°F	31.7°F	2.12 in	54.7°F	35.0°F	2.34 in
November	41.8°F	18.6°F	0.73 in	38.0°F	20.9°F	0.92 in
December	27.7°F	7.2°F	0.67 in	24.1°F	7.1°F	0.89 in

Cities that consider Mellette their climate twin

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

Nassau, MN (ranks Mellette #2)
Hunter, ND (ranks Mellette #2)

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 →