Weather in Palermo in January

Shoulder season. January sits in between. You will get good days and you will lose some. Highs sit at 14.5 °C and the day is short; this is an indoors-with-excursions month, not an outdoors-all-day one.

January ranks 12 of 12 — near the bottom of Palermo's year. May is the month that works, and the swing between the two is 35 points, which is a different holiday rather than a slightly better one.

Rain on 13 days, 3 of them heavy. Enough to need a plan B, not enough to need a plan around it. Layers, and a genuinely waterproof outer — at 14.5 °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: the day barely swings — 5 °C between the overnight low and the afternoon high. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest January day reached 19.9 °C and the coldest night fell to 3.5 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 75 mm — roughly 77% of the month's rain in one day.

This is the volatile part. January rainfall has ranged from 4 mm to 316 mm across the twenty years measured — a 312 mm spread around an average of 97 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 13.4 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity runs at 82%, which at 14.5 °C means damp rather than muggy — the kind of cold that gets into a coat and stays there.

How January sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 15.9 °C in December, 14.5 here, 14.6 in February. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much.

Daylight in January

January sits at the dark end of Palermo's year — 9.8 hours of daylight against 14.8 at midsummer, gaining 0.6 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 14.9 °C in January — cold — a quick dip rather than a swim, and a wetsuit if you are in for longer. The sea peaks at 27.2 °C in August and bottoms out at 14.2 °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

Off season. The genuine off season: cheapest by a distance, with the caveat that some tours and restaurants close entirely.

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

January in Palermo versus nearby

If Palermo is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Catania is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 2 days less rain. Taormina is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, the same number of rain days.

So: January is a compromise. May is 35 points better and is what Palermo 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 Palermo

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