Climate twins of Williston, ND

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

Top match: Saco, MT

Month Williston Saco
High Low Precip High Low Precip
January 22.1°F 1.0°F 0.56 in 25.6°F 1.5°F 0.26 in
February 26.7°F 5.5°F 0.48 in 30.1°F 5.5°F 0.33 in
March 40.1°F 17.5°F 0.63 in 42.8°F 17.4°F 0.53 in
April 55.6°F 29.2°F 1.05 in 57.3°F 29.1°F 1.05 in
May 67.4°F 40.2°F 2.10 in 67.5°F 39.9°F 1.77 in
June 76.7°F 50.2°F 2.64 in 74.3°F 50.4°F 3.01 in
July 84.5°F 56.3°F 2.48 in 82.8°F 55.2°F 1.69 in
August 83.9°F 54.0°F 1.57 in 82.1°F 53.1°F 1.35 in
September 72.6°F 43.5°F 1.36 in 71.5°F 42.3°F 1.35 in
October 55.9°F 30.4°F 0.94 in 57.2°F 29.7°F 1.05 in
November 38.4°F 17.1°F 0.67 in 40.8°F 16.6°F 0.54 in
December 26.1°F 6.1°F 0.63 in 29.0°F 5.9°F 0.43 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 →