Weather in Kolkata in January

Prime time. January is about as good as Kolkata gets. Highs average 24.8 °C, lows 10.6 °C, and rain falls on 2 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

January ranks 2 of 12 in Kolkata. Only December scores clearly higher, and the difference is small enough to be settled by price rather than weather.

Rain falls on only 2 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 30.9 °C and the coldest night fell to 3.4 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 35 mm — roughly 269% of the month's rain in one day.

This is the volatile part. January rainfall has ranged from 0 mm to 58 mm across the twenty years measured — a 58 mm spread around an average of 13 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 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 65%.

How January sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 24.6 °C in December, 24.8 here, 29.9 in February. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much.

Daylight in January

January sits at the dark end of Kolkata's year — 10.9 hours of daylight against 13.5 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 — 28.3 °C between the warmest afternoons and the coldest nights, wider than any coastal city at this latitude would manage. Within January itself the daily swing is 14.2 °C, so mornings and afternoons need different clothes.

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 Kolkata versus nearby

If Kolkata is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Jamshedpur is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, the same number of rain days. Ranchi is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 1 day more rain.

So: January is effectively as good as it gets here — 1 points behind December, which is inside the margin where the weather stops being the deciding factor and price starts being it.

Every month in Kolkata

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