Climate twins of Pukwana, SD

These are the US cities whose 12-month climate pattern most closely matches Pukwana'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.

Rank 1 closest
Dupree, SD
similarity distance: 0.824 (lower = more similar)
Rank 2 closest
Sutherland, NE
similarity distance: 1.064 (lower = more similar)
Rank 3 closest
Hershey, NE
similarity distance: 1.064 (lower = more similar)

Side-by-side: Pukwana vs its climate twin

Top match: Dupree, SD

Month Pukwana Dupree
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 30.6°F 11.1°F 0.40 in 31.4°F 9.8°F 0.41 in
February 35.3°F 14.2°F 0.58 in 35.1°F 13.1°F 0.59 in
March 46.9°F 24.7°F 1.12 in 47.9°F 22.5°F 0.85 in
April 59.1°F 35.1°F 2.32 in 60.7°F 32.9°F 1.98 in
May 69.9°F 46.7°F 3.19 in 71.7°F 44.0°F 3.27 in
June 80.6°F 57.6°F 3.57 in 82.3°F 54.3°F 3.72 in
July 87.7°F 62.8°F 2.18 in 90.2°F 60.2°F 2.49 in
August 85.7°F 61.2°F 2.28 in 89.5°F 58.3°F 1.79 in
September 77.4°F 51.2°F 2.13 in 80.0°F 48.8°F 1.22 in
October 61.7°F 37.5°F 1.57 in 62.6°F 35.6°F 1.60 in
November 46.3°F 24.7°F 0.51 in 46.2°F 23.1°F 0.43 in
December 33.6°F 15.0°F 0.52 in 34.2°F 13.3°F 0.50 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 →