Climate twins of Russell, IA

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

Top match: La Crescent, MN

Month Russell La Crescent
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 31.0°F 10.6°F 0.96 in 25.5°F 11.7°F 1.17 in
February 35.7°F 13.7°F 1.40 in 30.1°F 14.5°F 1.17 in
March 48.5°F 24.7°F 1.90 in 42.1°F 27.0°F 1.93 in
April 61.0°F 35.0°F 4.15 in 56.9°F 40.2°F 4.07 in
May 70.7°F 46.6°F 5.39 in 68.2°F 51.5°F 5.07 in
June 80.3°F 57.1°F 4.92 in 78.0°F 62.6°F 5.44 in
July 84.5°F 61.5°F 4.21 in 81.8°F 66.8°F 4.21 in
August 83.1°F 59.0°F 4.40 in 79.6°F 64.5°F 4.31 in
September 76.1°F 49.8°F 3.71 in 71.6°F 55.8°F 3.87 in
October 63.8°F 37.8°F 2.98 in 58.5°F 44.4°F 2.97 in
November 48.6°F 26.1°F 2.03 in 43.0°F 30.9°F 1.98 in
December 36.5°F 16.2°F 1.27 in 30.1°F 19.3°F 1.44 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 →