Climate twins of Shelby, MT

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

Top match: Belgrade, MT

Month	Shelby			Belgrade
	High	Low	Precip	High	Low	Precip
January	31.4°F	6.1°F	0.46 in	32.2°F	10.2°F	0.44 in
February	35.3°F	9.9°F	0.36 in	35.6°F	12.7°F	0.42 in
March	43.9°F	18.4°F	0.63 in	46.4°F	21.6°F	0.93 in
April	54.2°F	28.4°F	1.34 in	55.3°F	29.1°F	1.68 in
May	64.4°F	38.0°F	1.77 in	65.0°F	37.6°F	2.12 in
June	72.6°F	46.0°F	2.85 in	73.8°F	44.1°F	2.54 in
July	82.2°F	51.5°F	1.14 in	85.4°F	49.4°F	1.08 in
August	82.2°F	49.3°F	0.85 in	84.1°F	47.4°F	0.94 in
September	70.9°F	40.5°F	1.01 in	73.0°F	39.5°F	1.00 in
October	56.2°F	29.0°F	0.74 in	57.5°F	29.3°F	1.10 in
November	42.0°F	17.6°F	0.52 in	41.7°F	18.2°F	0.74 in
December	33.1°F	9.1°F	0.46 in	31.7°F	9.7°F	0.44 in

Cities that consider Shelby their climate twin

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

Belgrade, MT (ranks Shelby #2)
Boulder, MT (ranks Shelby #3)

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 →