Weather in Los Angeles in December

Prime time. December is about as good as Los Angeles gets. Highs average 19.8 °C, lows 9.7 °C, and rain falls on 6 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

December ranks 9 of 12 in Los Angeles: past the worst of the year but short of May, 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 December reaches 30 °C. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest December day reached 29.6 °C and the coldest night fell to 2.5 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 57 mm — roughly 88% of the month's rain in one day.

This is the volatile part. December rainfall has ranged from 0 mm to 262 mm across the twenty years measured — a 262 mm spread around an average of 65 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 8.1 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 58%.

How December sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 24.1 °C in November, 19.8 here, 20.2 in January. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much.

Daylight in December

December sits at the dark end of Los Angeles's year — 9.9 hours of daylight against 14.4 at midsummer, holding steady all month. Sightseeing days are genuinely shorter, and an itinerary built for summer will not fit.

An inland climate

Despite being inland, the year stays fairly even: 23 °C between the year's warmest afternoons and coldest nights.

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 Los Angeles versus nearby

If Los Angeles is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Irvine is close enough to be a coin toss — 2.3 °C cooler, the same number of rain days. Riverside is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, the same number of rain days.

So: December works, with May the better month by 10 points if the dates can move. If they cannot, nothing here should stop you booking.

Every month in Los Angeles

See all twelve months in Los Angeles, or where else to go in December.