Weather in Los Angeles in January

Prime time. If you get to pick your dates, January is the one. Highs average 20.2 °C, lows 9.9 °C, and rain falls on 5 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

January ranks 7 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 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. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest January day reached 32.4 °C and the coldest night fell to 1 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 79 mm — roughly 108% of the month's rain in one day.

This is the volatile part. January rainfall has ranged from 0 mm to 245 mm across the twenty years measured — a 245 mm spread around an average of 73 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 8.2 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 59%.

How January sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 19.8 °C in December, 20.2 here, 20.1 in February. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much.

Daylight in January

January sits at the dark end of Los Angeles's year — 10.1 hours of daylight against 14.4 at midsummer, gaining 0.5 hours across the 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

Shoulder. The value months — prices ease off and you get the place closer to itself. January is the value pick for Los Angeles: it scores within 8 points of May without carrying May's prices.

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

January 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 — 2.6 °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: January works, with May the better month by 8 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 January.