Weather in El Paso in December

A good month. December works. It is not the peak, but nothing about it fights you. Highs sit at 14.4 °C and the day is short; this is an indoors-with-excursions month, not an outdoors-all-day one.

December ranks 7 of 12 in El Paso: past the worst of the year but short of March, which is the month to book if the dates are open.

Rain falls on only 3 days, so an itinerary with no wet-weather fallback is a reasonable risk. Layers, and a genuinely waterproof outer — at 14.4 °C the difference between a good day and a miserable one is entirely down to what you are wearing.

What the averages hide

Averages flatten a month, and this one hides a few things: 12 nights fall below freezing. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest December day reached 24.3 °C and the coldest night fell to -6.7 °C.

This is the volatile part. December rainfall has ranged from 1 mm to 43 mm across the twenty years measured — a 42 mm spread around an average of 14 mm. The average is real but almost no individual December looks like it, so treat the figure as the middle of a wide range rather than a forecast.

Wind is light at 8.9 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 50%.

How December sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 19.9 °C in November, 14.4 here, 14.4 in January. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much.

Daylight in December

December sits at the dark end of El Paso's year — 10.1 hours of daylight against 14.2 at midsummer, holding steady all 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 — 36.1 °C between the warmest afternoons and the coldest nights, wider than any coastal city at this latitude would manage. At 1133 m the air is thin enough to matter — sun that burns faster than the temperature suggests, and nights that cool off quickly.

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.

December in El Paso versus nearby

If El Paso is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Chihuahua is a better bet in December — 5.3 °C warmer, 2 days less rain. Albuquerque is the weaker option in December — 4.1 °C cooler, 1 day more rain.

So: December is a compromise. March is 20 points better and is what El Paso is actually like at its best — worth moving the trip for if that is possible, and worth adjusting expectations for if it is not.

Every month in El Paso

See all twelve months in El Paso, or where else to go in December.