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Photo by Richard Haworth, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Scottish Highlands in January
avoid · not the best time to go · the coolest month of the year
The year in Scottish Highlands
Tap a month for its page
- JanJScottish Highlands in January: avoid
- FebFScottish Highlands in February: avoid
- MarMScottish Highlands in March: avoid
- AprAScottish Highlands in April: sweet spot
- MayMScottish Highlands in May: sweet spot
- JunJScottish Highlands in June: ok
- JulJScottish Highlands in July: ok, busy
- AugAScottish Highlands in August: ok
- SepSScottish Highlands in September: ok
- OctOScottish Highlands in October: avoid
- NovNScottish Highlands in November: avoid
- DecDScottish Highlands in December: avoid
- Sweet spot
- Good
- OK
- Avoid
- Busy
Plan this trip
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Flights from
Flights
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Where to stay
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Luxury
Things to do
Car hire
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Travel insurance
Check whether your bank card or home insurance already covers this trip.
If the trip needs a visa, the travel agent or visa centre usually sells the cover it asks for.
Mobile data (eSIM)
Your own plan's EU roaming may already cover this.
Renting a pocket Wi-Fi is the other common way to stay connected.
These are sites people in book with. Each opens in a new tab, on the site's own pages.
The numbers
| Daily high | 6°C |
|---|---|
| Nightly low | 2°C |
| Feels like, afternoon | 3°C |
| Rainy days, 1 mm or more | 16 · 188 mm |
| Humidity | 91% |
| Sunshine | 1.9 h/day |
| Daylight | 7.6 h/day |
| Hiking | 0 of 31 days dry and 10–27 °C |
| Crowds | 80 / 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 Fort William: ten years of ERA5 and ERA5-Land reanalysis, through Open-Meteo's open data.
How busy it gets
Public holidays in January
Holidays crowd a place out and push fares up around them; they count toward the crowd score above.
Scottish Highlands in pictures
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Michal Klajban, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Karora, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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Grendelkhan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
What to pack
- A proper coat, hat and gloves: nights average 2°C.
- Rain gear you will actually use: about 16 rainy days and 188 mm.
- Humidity averages 91%; breathable fabrics dry faster.
Each line is a threshold over the ten-year figures above, not advice from anywhere else.
Before you go
Type G plugs at 230 V. Drives on the left. The currency is the Pound sterling. Everything for United Kingdom: cost of living, languages, emergency numbers and health.
On arrival in Scottish Highlands: the apps, paying, getting around, tipping and the emergency numbers.
January elsewhere
In January from
The other months at Scottish Highlands
- January
- February avoid
- March avoid
- April sweet spot
- May sweet spot
- June ok
- July ok
- August ok
- September ok
- October avoid
- November avoid
- December avoid
← December · All twelve months at Scottish Highlands · February →
Links marked Ad pay us a commission if you book through one, at no extra cost to you. That does not affect the numbers on this page, which are computed before any link is built.