Climate twins of St. Cloud, MN

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

Top match: Chetek, WI

Month St. Cloud Chetek
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 20.7°F 2.9°F 0.67 in 21.6°F 1.7°F 0.89 in
February 25.7°F 6.5°F 0.76 in 27.2°F 4.8°F 0.82 in
March 38.5°F 19.8°F 1.57 in 39.6°F 18.1°F 1.47 in
April 54.3°F 32.4°F 2.61 in 54.3°F 31.6°F 2.77 in
May 67.8°F 44.6°F 3.66 in 67.8°F 44.7°F 3.85 in
June 77.2°F 54.8°F 3.75 in 77.3°F 54.7°F 4.17 in
July 81.6°F 58.9°F 3.60 in 81.4°F 58.8°F 3.98 in
August 79.2°F 56.3°F 4.00 in 79.5°F 56.3°F 4.21 in
September 71.0°F 48.0°F 3.01 in 71.4°F 47.8°F 3.34 in
October 55.9°F 35.5°F 2.61 in 56.8°F 35.3°F 3.03 in
November 39.3°F 22.6°F 1.37 in 40.4°F 22.9°F 1.68 in
December 25.8°F 9.8°F 0.88 in 27.1°F 10.0°F 1.22 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 →