What is a "close match"?

A 100% match exists when any county completely satisfies ALL of your wishes. But what about when a county is right on the edge of meeting one of your wishes? For example, what if you set a high limit for rain of 37 inches, but a county receives 38 inches? Almost certainly, if that county satisfied every other requirement except rain, you’d still want to consider it.
 
When a county doesn’t quite meet your wish, we determine how far it is from your need and assign a scale from 0 to 100% with our super-secret algorithm (think of it as artificial intelligence without the “artificial” part). 100% matches display counties in dark blue on the map. Close matches display in a faded blue in accordance with how closely they match your wishes. The count of 100% matches is displayed in the blue oval at the top right corner of the page.
Close matches, then, are counties with at least one wish that was not met completely. The higher the percentage, the closer the match to your ideal.
 
We will only shade on the map close matches that have at least a 75% match per the nifty algorithm mentioned above. The counties are displayed in rank order, with the strongest matches on top. Click the "Matches" dropdown to display the list of matches.

If there are no 100% matches, the count of close matches is displayed in the light blue oval at the top right of the page.

If you don’t even have a close match, there are no counties that satisfy your wishes to the 75% level. We’re sorry to tell you, but you’re going to have to relax your standards because not even your home county is making the cut. 😢

Nevertheless, we will still show you the matching percent level for each county for as long as you are willing to scroll. That's a LOT of scrolling!