Climate twins of Rapid City, SD
These are the US cities whose 12-month climate pattern most closely matches Rapid City'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: Rapid City vs its climate twin
Top match: Wood, SD
| Month | Rapid City | Wood | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | Low | Precip | High | Low | Precip | |
| January | 36.5°F | 16.2°F | 0.31 in | 33.9°F | 11.1°F | 0.43 in |
| February | 38.3°F | 17.5°F | 0.53 in | 37.5°F | 13.2°F | 0.64 in |
| March | 47.4°F | 25.6°F | 0.94 in | 48.0°F | 22.3°F | 1.21 in |
| April | 55.0°F | 34.0°F | 2.26 in | 58.0°F | 31.8°F | 2.42 in |
| May | 65.3°F | 44.6°F | 4.12 in | 68.8°F | 43.6°F | 3.36 in |
| June | 76.2°F | 54.6°F | 3.33 in | 79.4°F | 54.1°F | 3.50 in |
| July | 84.4°F | 61.6°F | 2.62 in | 87.5°F | 60.1°F | 2.42 in |
| August | 83.4°F | 59.9°F | 2.17 in | 86.2°F | 57.9°F | 1.94 in |
| September | 74.0°F | 50.8°F | 1.40 in | 77.7°F | 48.4°F | 1.82 in |
| October | 58.8°F | 37.9°F | 1.49 in | 62.3°F | 34.9°F | 1.55 in |
| November | 47.0°F | 26.6°F | 0.48 in | 48.0°F | 23.1°F | 0.69 in |
| December | 37.6°F | 18.6°F | 0.37 in | 36.6°F | 14.3°F | 0.51 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 →