Climate twins of Rifle, CO

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

Top match: Joseph, UT

Month Rifle Joseph
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 37.4°F 9.7°F 0.93 in 42.3°F 12.4°F 0.78 in
February 41.7°F 15.4°F 0.80 in 46.3°F 16.2°F 0.97 in
March 54.8°F 21.8°F 0.93 in 54.9°F 22.3°F 0.85 in
April 62.0°F 28.2°F 1.23 in 61.0°F 27.4°F 1.14 in
May 71.7°F 36.6°F 1.32 in 70.9°F 35.2°F 1.19 in
June 83.1°F 44.7°F 0.80 in 82.7°F 43.0°F 0.63 in
July 88.2°F 52.2°F 1.16 in 89.6°F 51.0°F 1.23 in
August 85.4°F 49.3°F 1.27 in 87.5°F 49.0°F 1.30 in
September 78.5°F 40.6°F 1.42 in 79.5°F 39.6°F 1.01 in
October 64.4°F 29.5°F 1.45 in 66.3°F 28.5°F 1.21 in
November 49.5°F 19.8°F 0.74 in 52.5°F 19.3°F 0.88 in
December 37.2°F 11.3°F 0.71 in 41.8°F 11.7°F 0.89 in

Cities that consider Rifle their climate twin

These US cities have Rifle in their top 3 most-similar list — meaning if you were to move from any of these places, Rifle would feel familiar.

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 →