Climate twins of Nelson, MN
These are the US cities whose 12-month climate pattern most closely matches Nelson'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: Nelson vs its climate twin
Top match: Naples, SD
| Month | Nelson | Naples | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | Low | Precip | High | Low | Precip | |
| January | 19.0°F | 2.3°F | 0.38 in | 21.1°F | 3.5°F | 0.62 in |
| February | 23.7°F | 6.0°F | 0.41 in | 25.9°F | 7.1°F | 0.62 in |
| March | 36.6°F | 19.4°F | 1.00 in | 38.7°F | 18.9°F | 1.03 in |
| April | 52.4°F | 32.7°F | 2.04 in | 53.3°F | 31.5°F | 2.14 in |
| May | 66.3°F | 45.5°F | 3.05 in | 66.4°F | 44.6°F | 3.10 in |
| June | 75.7°F | 56.4°F | 3.72 in | 76.5°F | 55.9°F | 4.14 in |
| July | 80.2°F | 60.9°F | 4.00 in | 81.7°F | 60.7°F | 3.61 in |
| August | 78.3°F | 58.7°F | 3.46 in | 80.1°F | 58.1°F | 2.74 in |
| September | 69.9°F | 50.1°F | 2.63 in | 71.8°F | 48.9°F | 2.70 in |
| October | 54.5°F | 37.0°F | 2.21 in | 56.5°F | 35.2°F | 2.21 in |
| November | 37.6°F | 23.0°F | 0.83 in | 40.0°F | 21.3°F | 0.78 in |
| December | 24.2°F | 9.6°F | 0.36 in | 26.6°F | 9.8°F | 0.70 in |
Cities that consider Nelson their climate twin
These US cities have Nelson in their top 3 most-similar list — meaning if you were to move from any of these places, Nelson would feel familiar.
- Henry, SD (ranks Nelson #1)
- Florence, SD (ranks Nelson #1)
- Eden, SD (ranks Nelson #1)
- Lake City, SD (ranks Nelson #1)
- Veblen, SD (ranks Nelson #1)
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 →