Weather in Puntarenas in January

A good month. January is a solid month to be in Puntarenas. Highs average 32.5 °C, lows 24.5 °C, and rain falls on 4 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

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

Rain falls on only 4 days, so an itinerary with no wet-weather fallback is a reasonable risk. Pack for 32.5 °C days and 24.5 °C nights; the spread matters more here than any single number.

What the averages hide

Averages flatten a month, and this one hides a few things: 30 days top 30 °C, making the heat continuous rather than occasional. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest January day reached 36.3 °C and the coldest night fell to 21.8 °C.

This is the volatile part. January rainfall has ranged from 1 mm to 85 mm across the twenty years measured — a 84 mm spread around an average of 14 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 10.9 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 71%.

How January sits in the year

The month is on the way up: 1.6 °C warmer than December, and February adds another 1.6 °C. Late in the month feels noticeably different from the start of it, which is worth knowing if the trip is short.

Daylight in January

Puntarenas sits close enough to the equator that daylight barely moves all year — 11.6 hours in January, against a range of just 1.2 hours across the whole calendar. Sunrise and sunset land at roughly the same time whenever you come.

Sea temperature

The sea sits at about 28.2 °C in January — warm enough that the water offers no relief from the heat. The sea peaks at 29.5 °C in April and bottoms out at 27.7 °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

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 Puntarenas versus nearby

If Puntarenas is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. San José is a better bet in January — 8.1 °C cooler, 5 days more rain. Liberia is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 3 days less 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 Puntarenas

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