Climate twins of Storm Lake, IA

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

Top match: Greene, IA

Month Storm Lake Greene
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 25.8°F 8.8°F 0.77 in 25.0°F 7.5°F 0.94 in
February 30.2°F 13.3°F 1.01 in 29.4°F 11.5°F 1.04 in
March 43.4°F 25.1°F 1.74 in 43.4°F 24.1°F 1.79 in
April 58.1°F 36.9°F 3.53 in 58.5°F 35.9°F 3.81 in
May 69.1°F 49.4°F 4.87 in 70.2°F 48.6°F 5.13 in
June 79.2°F 60.2°F 5.33 in 79.8°F 59.3°F 5.46 in
July 82.3°F 63.7°F 3.83 in 82.7°F 62.8°F 4.20 in
August 79.9°F 61.4°F 4.43 in 80.4°F 60.2°F 4.04 in
September 74.1°F 52.6°F 2.96 in 74.3°F 51.2°F 3.37 in
October 60.6°F 39.6°F 2.42 in 61.0°F 39.0°F 2.51 in
November 44.3°F 26.6°F 1.75 in 44.3°F 25.4°F 1.76 in
December 31.1°F 15.3°F 1.11 in 30.5°F 14.6°F 1.35 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 →