Climate twins of Ottosen, IA

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

Top match: Afton, MN

Month Ottosen Afton
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 24.9°F 6.0°F 0.90 in 24.1°F 5.7°F 0.90 in
February 29.3°F 10.2°F 1.04 in 29.0°F 8.7°F 0.91 in
March 42.7°F 22.6°F 1.95 in 41.1°F 21.8°F 1.78 in
April 58.4°F 33.8°F 3.36 in 56.4°F 35.7°F 3.10 in
May 70.5°F 46.5°F 4.72 in 68.6°F 47.8°F 4.33 in
June 80.2°F 57.8°F 5.49 in 78.8°F 58.6°F 4.94 in
July 83.1°F 61.2°F 4.13 in 83.0°F 63.3°F 4.37 in
August 80.6°F 58.8°F 4.27 in 80.9°F 61.3°F 4.23 in
September 75.2°F 50.1°F 3.27 in 73.4°F 53.1°F 3.21 in
October 61.8°F 37.5°F 2.44 in 59.4°F 40.0°F 2.61 in
November 44.7°F 23.9°F 1.46 in 43.0°F 26.6°F 1.72 in
December 30.5°F 12.8°F 1.06 in 29.7°F 13.7°F 1.23 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 →