Climate twins of Nisland, SD

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

Top match: Melstone, MT

Month Nisland Melstone
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 31.8°F 9.8°F 0.36 in 34.8°F 14.4°F 0.51 in
February 35.1°F 12.6°F 0.50 in 38.0°F 16.7°F 0.44 in
March 45.5°F 21.7°F 0.82 in 48.7°F 24.6°F 0.77 in
April 56.1°F 31.5°F 1.81 in 58.6°F 33.3°F 1.80 in
May 65.9°F 42.6°F 3.16 in 67.8°F 42.4°F 2.92 in
June 76.9°F 52.8°F 3.32 in 77.6°F 51.2°F 2.77 in
July 85.8°F 59.2°F 2.07 in 87.6°F 57.5°F 1.54 in
August 85.1°F 56.7°F 1.30 in 86.8°F 55.5°F 1.10 in
September 75.4°F 46.5°F 0.99 in 75.5°F 46.0°F 1.18 in
October 59.9°F 33.4°F 1.38 in 59.9°F 34.8°F 1.32 in
November 45.1°F 20.9°F 0.53 in 45.8°F 24.5°F 0.59 in
December 34.2°F 11.9°F 0.41 in 35.7°F 16.2°F 0.53 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 →