Weather in Lubbock in December

A good month. December works. It is not the peak, but nothing about it fights you. Highs sit at 12.7 °C and the day is short; this is an indoors-with-excursions month, not an outdoors-all-day one.

December ranks 8 of 12 in Lubbock: past the worst of the year but short of April, 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 12.7 °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: 19 nights fall below freezing. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest December day reached 25.3 °C and the coldest night fell to -11.2 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 30 mm — roughly 176% of the month's rain in one day.

This is the volatile part. December rainfall has ranged from 1 mm to 46 mm across the twenty years measured — a 45 mm spread around an average of 17 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 12 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 57%.

How December sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 18 °C in November, 12.7 here, 12.7 in January. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much.

Daylight in December

December sits at the dark end of Lubbock'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

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 976 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 Lubbock versus nearby

If Lubbock is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Amarillo is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, the same number of rain days. Oklahoma City is the weaker option in December — 2.6 °C cooler, 2 days more rain.

So: December is a compromise. April is 22 points better and is what Lubbock 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 Lubbock

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