Climate twins of Sunburst, MT

These are the US cities whose 12-month climate pattern most closely matches Sunburst'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.

Rank 1 closest
Harlowton, MT
similarity distance: 0.913 (lower = more similar)
Rank 2 closest
Belgrade, MT
similarity distance: 0.952 (lower = more similar)
Rank 3 closest
Manhattan, MT
similarity distance: 1.025 (lower = more similar)

Side-by-side: Sunburst vs its climate twin

Top match: Harlowton, MT

Month Sunburst Harlowton
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 31.3°F 12.7°F 0.49 in 35.7°F 13.3°F 0.31 in
February 33.6°F 14.3°F 0.47 in 38.2°F 14.1°F 0.30 in
March 42.5°F 21.7°F 0.62 in 47.5°F 19.8°F 0.55 in
April 54.6°F 30.6°F 1.21 in 54.3°F 27.8°F 1.34 in
May 64.7°F 39.5°F 1.87 in 64.3°F 37.1°F 2.53 in
June 71.0°F 47.0°F 3.51 in 73.6°F 45.5°F 2.81 in
July 80.5°F 52.3°F 1.40 in 83.9°F 49.9°F 1.42 in
August 80.5°F 52.1°F 1.22 in 83.2°F 48.4°F 1.25 in
September 69.8°F 43.8°F 1.17 in 72.5°F 39.6°F 1.07 in
October 55.1°F 32.1°F 0.95 in 57.4°F 29.5°F 0.68 in
November 41.4°F 22.1°F 0.66 in 44.6°F 20.6°F 0.51 in
December 32.3°F 13.8°F 0.75 in 35.4°F 14.7°F 0.41 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 →