Weather in Key West in January

Prime time. If you get to pick your dates, January is the one. Highs average 22.7 °C, lows 20.8 °C, and rain falls on 5 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

January is the highest-scoring month of the twelve. The nearest rival is February, and the month at the other end of the year is August.

Rain falls on only 5 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; the day barely swings — 1.8 °C between the overnight low and the afternoon high. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest January day reached 26.5 °C and the coldest night fell to 10.9 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 55 mm — roughly 172% of the month's rain in one day.

This is the volatile part. January rainfall has ranged from 5 mm to 169 mm across the twenty years measured — a 164 mm spread around an average of 32 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 sits around 18.9 km/h — a steady breeze rather than a nuisance, and welcome on the warmer days, and humidity runs at 78%, high enough to notice on the warm days without dominating them.

How January sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 24.1 °C in December, 22.7 here, 23.1 in February. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much.

Daylight in January

January sits at the dark end of Key West's year — 10.8 hours of daylight against 13.6 at midsummer, gaining 0.4 hours across the month. Sightseeing days are genuinely shorter, and an itinerary built for summer will not fit.

Sea temperature

The sea sits at about 25 °C in January — warm enough to stay in as long as you like. The sea peaks at 29.9 °C in August and bottoms out at 24.9 °C — water lags the air by a month or two, which is why the best swimming often comes after the best weather.

How busy it gets

Peak season. Expect the highest prices of the year and to be booking well ahead.

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

January in Key West versus nearby

If Key West is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Miami is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 2 days more rain. Cape Coral is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 2 days more rain.

So: January is the answer for Key West. If it is booked out or priced out, February is the next best thing at 0 points behind, and August is the month to keep off the shortlist.

Every month in Key West

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