Climate twins of Swaledale, IA

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

Top match: West Salem, WI

Month Swaledale West Salem
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 24.2°F 7.2°F 0.89 in 23.6°F 8.3°F 1.12 in
February 28.5°F 11.4°F 1.22 in 28.7°F 12.8°F 1.13 in
March 42.1°F 23.6°F 2.29 in 41.1°F 24.4°F 1.93 in
April 57.5°F 34.5°F 4.15 in 55.4°F 36.1°F 4.02 in
May 69.6°F 46.8°F 5.15 in 67.2°F 47.9°F 4.91 in
June 79.6°F 57.3°F 5.39 in 76.0°F 57.8°F 5.29 in
July 82.5°F 60.5°F 4.43 in 79.5°F 61.8°F 4.26 in
August 80.2°F 57.6°F 3.79 in 78.1°F 60.3°F 4.47 in
September 74.1°F 48.8°F 3.45 in 70.8°F 52.0°F 4.00 in
October 59.9°F 36.6°F 2.53 in 57.6°F 39.9°F 2.91 in
November 43.6°F 24.3°F 1.67 in 41.7°F 27.7°F 1.94 in
December 29.7°F 13.5°F 1.29 in 29.2°F 15.4°F 1.49 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 →