Climate twins of Sanford, ME

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

Top match: Ellsworth, ME

Month Sanford Ellsworth
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 31.7°F 9.9°F 3.68 in 29.5°F 10.6°F 4.07 in
February 35.3°F 11.3°F 3.62 in 32.3°F 12.0°F 3.58 in
March 43.5°F 19.9°F 4.70 in 40.2°F 21.8°F 4.20 in
April 56.8°F 30.4°F 4.60 in 51.5°F 31.8°F 4.26 in
May 67.8°F 40.8°F 3.83 in 63.0°F 41.9°F 3.71 in
June 76.2°F 50.5°F 4.56 in 71.1°F 51.3°F 4.48 in
July 81.3°F 56.1°F 3.96 in 77.4°F 57.4°F 3.10 in
August 80.3°F 54.5°F 3.94 in 77.0°F 56.4°F 3.14 in
September 72.8°F 47.0°F 3.82 in 69.3°F 49.2°F 3.92 in
October 60.5°F 35.6°F 5.35 in 57.3°F 38.1°F 5.06 in
November 48.2°F 26.7°F 4.46 in 46.1°F 28.8°F 4.89 in
December 37.2°F 17.3°F 4.79 in 35.5°F 19.0°F 4.97 in

Cities that consider Sanford their climate twin

These US cities have Sanford in their top 3 most-similar list — meaning if you were to move from any of these places, Sanford 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 →