Weekly note
Death Valley: brown rocky mountain under blue sky during daytime

Death Valley in January

good · a good time to go · the coolest month of the year, the wettest month of the year

The year in Death Valley

Tap a month for its page

  1. Death Valley in January: good
  2. Death Valley in February: good, busy
  3. Death Valley in March: good, busy
  4. Death Valley in April: sweet spot
  5. Death Valley in May: avoid
  6. Death Valley in June: avoid
  7. Death Valley in July: avoid
  8. Death Valley in August: avoid
  9. Death Valley in September: avoid
  10. Death Valley in October: sweet spot
  11. Death Valley in November: good
  12. Death Valley in December: good
  • Sweet spot
  • Good
  • OK
  • Avoid
  • Busy
January at Death Valley is 19°C by day and 11°C at night, with 2 rainy days and about 9 hours of sun a day. 19C max, 2 rainy days.

The numbers

Daily high19°C
Nightly low11°C
Feels like, afternoon16°C
Rainy days, 1 mm or more2 · 16 mm
Humidity35%
Sunshine8.9 h/day
Daylight10.0 h/day
Hiking29 of 31 days dry and 10–27 °C good
Crowds77 / 100, higher is quieter

Ten-year averages for this calendar month. A rainy day is one with at least 1 mm of rain, as a weather station counts it. The model these figures come from drizzles more than a rain gauge, the more so the warmer the month, so its days count from 2 mm, rising to 5 mm in the hottest.

Weather read at Furnace Creek: ten years of ERA5 and ERA5-Land reanalysis, through Open-Meteo's open data.

How busy it gets

January: about usual. Busiest in February, March and July; quietest in May, September and October.

Public holidays in January

Holidays crowd a place out and push fares up around them; they count toward the crowd score above.

Death Valley in pictures

What to pack

  • Warm layers for the evenings, which drop to about 11°C.
  • Sun protection: about 9 hours of sunshine a day.

Each line is a threshold over the ten-year figures above, not advice from anywhere else.

Before you go

Type A and B plugs at 120 V. Drives on the right. The currency is the United states dollar. No UK Foreign Office advice against travel. Everything for United States: cost of living, languages, emergency numbers and health.

On arrival in Death Valley: the apps, paying, getting around, tipping and the emergency numbers.

January elsewhere

In January from

The other months at Death Valley

← December · All twelve months at Death Valley · February →

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