Climate twins of Plains, KS

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

Top match: Hill City, KS

Month Plains Hill City
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 46.0°F 18.6°F 0.85 in 42.8°F 17.1°F 0.33 in
February 48.9°F 21.9°F 0.70 in 46.3°F 19.9°F 0.45 in
March 59.4°F 29.8°F 1.67 in 57.4°F 28.7°F 1.08 in
April 67.7°F 38.3°F 1.94 in 66.3°F 37.9°F 1.97 in
May 78.9°F 49.8°F 2.78 in 76.3°F 49.5°F 3.34 in
June 88.5°F 60.3°F 3.67 in 88.0°F 60.4°F 2.79 in
July 94.4°F 65.3°F 3.37 in 93.3°F 66.1°F 3.61 in
August 91.9°F 64.3°F 2.71 in 90.0°F 63.6°F 2.95 in
September 84.4°F 55.1°F 1.56 in 82.6°F 54.0°F 2.06 in
October 71.5°F 41.1°F 2.22 in 69.0°F 40.0°F 1.60 in
November 57.7°F 28.8°F 0.61 in 55.1°F 27.1°F 0.66 in
December 47.6°F 20.2°F 0.96 in 43.9°F 19.0°F 0.66 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 →