In January, the average daytime high across New York, Chicago, London, Paris and four other cold-winter cities is just 4°C (38°F). These 48 destinations are warm, dry and outside hurricane and monsoon season — ranked by climate data, not brochures.
January back home — average highs
🇺🇸 New York 4°C🇺🇸 Chicago −0.4°C🇺🇸 Boston 2°C🇨🇦 Toronto −1°C🇬🇧 London 8°C🇫🇷 Paris 7°C🇩🇪 Berlin 3°C🇳🇱 Amsterdam 6°C
January at a glance
Warmest: Goa, India — 32°C average high
Driest: Lima, Peru — 1 mm of rain all month
Warmest sea: Recife — 29°C water
Mild and dry: Valparaíso, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Hurghada
Beach & island escapes (24–35°C)
Proper beach weather: warm days, warm evenings, and sea you can stay in. The long-haul classics, ranked by how established they are as destinations, then by how dry the month is.
Every destination in our climate dataset is checked against January's long-term averages:
Warm enough — beaches need a 24–35°C average high, mild coasts 19–23°C, cities 20–29°C.
Dry enough — no more than 120 mm of rain across the month (80 mm for the mild coasts). We judge rain by millimetres rather than rain days, because a five-minute tropical shower counts as a "rain day".
Outside storm season — anywhere in peak hurricane, cyclone or monsoon season that month is left out.
Within each group, better-known destinations come first, then the drier ones. "Warmer" is measured against the average January high of the eight cold-winter cities above. Sea temperatures are monthly sea-surface means.
