Climate twins of Spearfish, SD

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

Top match: Kilgore, NE

Month Spearfish Kilgore
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 35.9°F 15.7°F 0.60 in 33.1°F 11.4°F 0.77 in
February 36.9°F 16.3°F 0.91 in 36.5°F 13.3°F 0.87 in
March 45.8°F 24.2°F 1.19 in 47.1°F 21.7°F 1.47 in
April 54.9°F 32.0°F 2.23 in 56.3°F 31.0°F 2.96 in
May 64.3°F 41.8°F 3.72 in 66.9°F 42.4°F 3.37 in
June 75.3°F 51.3°F 3.51 in 77.8°F 53.1°F 3.51 in
July 83.6°F 57.6°F 2.35 in 84.7°F 58.7°F 2.64 in
August 82.9°F 56.1°F 1.88 in 84.0°F 55.9°F 2.31 in
September 74.0°F 47.6°F 1.56 in 75.4°F 45.9°F 1.81 in
October 58.1°F 35.4°F 2.04 in 60.7°F 33.3°F 1.41 in
November 45.9°F 25.6°F 0.70 in 46.2°F 22.1°F 0.74 in
December 37.2°F 17.5°F 0.72 in 35.3°F 13.5°F 0.78 in

Cities that consider Spearfish their climate twin

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