Weather in Bakersfield in January

Prime time. January is about as good as Bakersfield gets. Highs average 19.5 °C, lows 7.6 °C, and rain falls on 6 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

January ranks 5 of 12 in Bakersfield: past the worst of the year but short of November, which is the month to book if the dates are open.

Rain falls on only 6 days, so an itinerary with no wet-weather fallback is a reasonable risk. Nothing specialised needed — this is the month you pack for the trip rather than for the weather.

What the averages hide

Averages flatten a month, and this one hides a few things: it never really gets hot: not one day in an average January reaches 30 °C. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest January day reached 32.6 °C and the coldest night fell to -1.3 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 25 mm — roughly 66% of the month's rain in one day.

This is the volatile part. January rainfall has ranged from 1 mm to 116 mm across the twenty years measured — a 115 mm spread around an average of 38 mm. The average is real but almost no individual January looks like it, so treat the figure as the middle of a wide range rather than a forecast.

Wind is light at 6.4 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 61%.

How January sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 18.6 °C in December, 19.5 here, 19.9 in February. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much.

Daylight in January

January sits at the dark end of Bakersfield's year — 10 hours of daylight against 14.5 at midsummer, gaining 0.6 hours across the month. Sightseeing days are genuinely shorter, and an itinerary built for summer will not fit.

An inland climate

With no coast nearby, the year swings a fair way — 32.5 °C between the warmest afternoons and the coldest nights, wider than any coastal city at this latitude would manage.

How busy it gets

Busy. Popular without being frantic; book the things you care about, improvise the rest.

Crowd levels are estimated from climate desirability and school-holiday calendars, not from visitor numbers.

January in Bakersfield versus nearby

If Bakersfield is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Los Angeles is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 1 day less rain. Fresno is the weaker option in January — 3.4 °C cooler, the same number of rain days.

So: January works, with November the better month by 8 points if the dates can move. If they cannot, nothing here should stop you booking.

Every month in Bakersfield

See all twelve months in Bakersfield, or where else to go in January.