Climate twins of Monona, IA

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

Top match: Lehigh, IA

Month Monona Lehigh
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 25.7°F 7.4°F 1.12 in 26.2°F 6.9°F 0.87 in
February 29.9°F 10.5°F 1.21 in 30.8°F 10.9°F 1.34 in
March 43.0°F 22.4°F 2.09 in 44.1°F 23.3°F 2.05 in
April 57.5°F 34.0°F 4.14 in 58.9°F 33.9°F 3.72 in
May 69.4°F 46.9°F 4.99 in 70.0°F 46.7°F 5.27 in
June 79.0°F 57.8°F 5.88 in 79.5°F 57.2°F 5.76 in
July 82.8°F 60.9°F 4.52 in 82.8°F 60.8°F 4.41 in
August 80.8°F 58.2°F 4.36 in 80.5°F 58.0°F 4.75 in
September 74.0°F 49.2°F 3.96 in 74.8°F 48.9°F 3.36 in
October 60.6°F 37.0°F 3.00 in 61.9°F 36.5°F 2.65 in
November 44.7°F 25.5°F 2.10 in 45.4°F 24.1°F 1.70 in
December 31.4°F 14.0°F 1.57 in 31.7°F 13.3°F 1.36 in

Cities that consider Monona their climate twin

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

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 →