Climate twins of St. Olaf, IA
These are the US cities whose 12-month climate pattern most closely matches St. Olaf'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. Olaf vs its climate twin
Top match: Watertown, WI
| Month | St. Olaf | Watertown | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | Low | Precip | High | Low | Precip | |
| January | 26.3°F | 6.3°F | 1.25 in | 26.4°F | 10.5°F | 1.37 in |
| February | 31.0°F | 10.1°F | 1.28 in | 30.3°F | 13.3°F | 1.35 in |
| March | 44.4°F | 22.3°F | 2.03 in | 42.2°F | 24.0°F | 1.90 in |
| April | 58.6°F | 34.1°F | 4.00 in | 55.6°F | 35.1°F | 3.67 in |
| May | 69.7°F | 45.7°F | 4.65 in | 67.8°F | 46.9°F | 4.19 in |
| June | 79.3°F | 56.0°F | 6.67 in | 77.7°F | 57.1°F | 5.80 in |
| July | 82.2°F | 60.0°F | 4.60 in | 81.3°F | 61.1°F | 4.50 in |
| August | 80.5°F | 57.6°F | 3.92 in | 79.5°F | 59.0°F | 4.11 in |
| September | 74.1°F | 48.5°F | 3.63 in | 72.8°F | 50.8°F | 3.47 in |
| October | 61.5°F | 36.6°F | 2.92 in | 59.6°F | 39.5°F | 3.00 in |
| November | 45.3°F | 24.5°F | 2.28 in | 44.6°F | 27.9°F | 2.14 in |
| December | 32.2°F | 14.3°F | 1.57 in | 32.0°F | 17.3°F | 1.75 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 →