Key West in January: Weather, Sea Temperature, Crowds and Prices

KEY WEST · JANUARY · 24.55° N

January is the driest warm month at the end of the road. The airport’s 1991-2020 normals put the average high at 75.8°F, the average low at 65.5°F and the whole month’s rainfall at 1.83 inches. The Atlantic hurricane season closed on November 30 and does not reopen until June 1. Sunset lands at 6:01 p.m. in mid-January, late enough for a full beach afternoon and early enough that dinner still feels like evening.

January is also the coolest of the three winter months, with nights nearly three degrees under December’s, and it carries 3.3 days of measurable rain, more than either neighbor. Winter is the Keys’ busy half of the year, the room bill picks up 11% in tax, and Old Town street meters run $3.00 an hour. Flying into EYW and driving the 155 miles down from Miami both work, and our Overseas Highway guide has the stops between.

On this page

• Key West weather in January75.8°F days, 1.83 inches, 3.3 rain days
• Is the water warm enough to swim?Sea surface at 76.5°F
• Crowds, lodging tax and parking rates11% on the room, $3.00 an hour at the meter
• Things to do in Key West in JanuaryHemingway Home, Fort Zachary Taylor, Dry Tortugas
• A two-day plan for the islandFrom the 8 a.m. ferry to the 6:01 p.m. sunset
• January or February?How the three winter months compare
• Is January a good time to visit Key West?Yes, with two exceptions

The drive down, where to sleep and what a week costs live in the wider guides: the road trip, where to stay, the budget. The normals below cover what the date itself decides, from the length of the afternoon to the temperature you step into at Fort Zachary Taylor.

Key West weather in January: average highs, lows and rain days

Every figure here comes from one thermometer: NOAA NCEI’s 1991-2020 monthly normals for station USW00012836, at Key West International Airport. That station reads an average January high of 75.8°F, an average low of 65.5°F and 1.83 inches of rain over the month. These are station normals from a real instrument, not a reanalysis grid cell averaged over open water, and on a small island the two can disagree by a couple of degrees on the overnight figure.

Rain arrives in short, countable visits. An average January records 3.3 days with at least 0.10 inch, roughly one day in nine, and just 0.4 day with an inch or more, which works out to a genuine soaking about two Januaries in five. Pack for a squall over lunch rather than a lost day, and keep the indoor option loose rather than booked.

The spread between 75.8°F and 65.5°F is 10.3 degrees, and all of it lands after dark. Midday asks for sunscreen and nothing else. From about 6 p.m., on a pier or a boat deck with a breeze on it, one long-sleeve layer per person becomes the difference between staying out and going in. Nobody needs a coat in Key West in January.

January 15 gives 10 hours 49 minutes of daylight, between a 7:11 a.m. sunrise and a 6:01 p.m. sunset, Eastern time. That sets the shape of the day. The Sunset Celebration at Mallory Square starts roughly two hours before the sun goes down, so the waterfront is already thickening around 4 p.m., and anything outdoors wants to be finished or well underway by then.

Can you swim in Key West in January? Sea temperature and what it feels like

Sea surface off Key West averages 76.5°F in January, from Open-Meteo’s marine data averaged over 2015-2024. Read the number for what it is: a mean of daily maxima, so a shade warmer than a true 24-hour average, and weighted toward the warmest part of the afternoon rather than the water you meet at eight in the morning. Tables that publish a 24-hour mean will sit a little lower.

At 76.5°F the sea runs seven tenths of a degree above the month’s average daytime high, which is why getting in is easy and standing around wet afterward is the uncomfortable part. Swimming at Fort Zachary Taylor works from 8 a.m. to sundown, $2.50 if you walk or cycle in. An hour of snorkeling, still and face-down, is where most people start wishing they had brought a shorty.

We found no January wind or wave series for the waters off Key West, so we give no figure for either. What we can date: the Yankee Freedom III leaves at 8 a.m. daily, check-in before 7:30, for a park that sits 70 miles west with no road or bridge to it. A crossing that far offshore is the plan most exposed to whatever a given morning does, so we book it for the first of two days, never the last.

How busy is Key West in January? Crowds, prices and the demand peak

January sits inside Florida’s dry season and well outside the hurricane season that runs June 1 to November 30 and peaks on September 10. Winter is the Keys’ busy half of the year for exactly that reason. We found no monthly occupancy or room-rate series for Key West, so we crown no month the most expensive and give no percentage for how far rates move between seasons.

Book the dated items first, because only one of them has a fixed capacity. The Dry Tortugas ferry runs a single departure a day and sells out weeks ahead, so a month of lead time is the safe minimum. Rooms and flights into EYW are the flexible part of the booking, and our Florida cost guide handles that arithmetic. Fix the boat date, then build two nights around it.

Monroe County levies a 5.0% transient rental tax, filed and paid alongside the 6% state sales tax, per the Florida Department of Revenue’s form DR-15TDT. On a nightly rate that is 11% before a property adds anything of its own. We could not verify typical resort-fee or parking-fee levels at Key West hotels, so no dollar figure for those appears from us.

Parking is the one line where spending more genuinely changes the trip. City meters run $3.00 an hour. The Old Town Parking Garage charges $6 an hour or $48 a day plus tax, the Mallory Square lot $7 an hour or $48 a day with a ten-hour cap, the Key West Bight lot $5 an hour or $40 a day. Two days in the garage costs more than Hemingway Home tickets for a family of four. Rates change, so check the City of Key West before you count on them.

Things to do in Key West in January: Hemingway Home, Fort Zachary Taylor and Dry Tortugas

With hurricane season shut until June 1 and its September 10 peak half a year off, a day trip 70 miles offshore stops being a bet on the tropics and becomes a reservation. The walking weather follows the same logic: 75.8°F at midday across the largest wooden historic district in North America, an island flat and compact enough that a bicycle beats a car by a wide margin.

The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum takes walk-ins from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day, $19 for adults and $7 for children, free under six. Its polydactyl cats descend from Snow White, the novelist’s own, according to the museum, which is the only source on that point. Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park holds the beach most often called the best in Key West: $6.00 per vehicle for up to eight people plus $0.50 a head, $4.50 alone in the car, $2.50 on foot. The Yankee Freedom III runs about $250 for adults in 2026, park entrance, snorkel gear, breakfast and lunch included.

Water temperature barely shifts across these weeks, 77.6°F in December against 76.5 in January and 76.3 in February, while the air does all the seasonal moving. The scheduling consequence shows at Fort Zachary Taylor. The fort itself closes at 5 p.m., the park stays open to sundown, and in mid-January sundown is 6:01. That leaves a clean hour of beach after the last fort visitor has been walked out, on a park that opens 365 days a year.

Free, and worth timing: the Sunset Celebration at Mallory Square runs every night of the year, weather permitting, from about two hours before sunset until the light has gone. The Duval Loop bus costs nothing and calls at 18 stops around Old Town. Sources disagree sharply on its timetable, somewhere between every 15 and every 30 minutes across a day that may start as early as 6 a.m. and may run to midnight, so read the stop sign rather than a blog. It does not serve the airport. Mile Marker 0, at Whitehead and Fleming, costs a photograph.

Key West in January: a two-day itinerary

Day one runs on foot. Sunrise is 7:11 a.m. and Fort Zachary Taylor opens at 8, $2.50 walking in, which buys two hours of beach before the island is properly awake. Into Old Town for the Hemingway Home at opening, 9 a.m. and $19, then key lime pie, named the official pie of the State of Florida in 2006 and reported to have started here in the late nineteenth century. Mallory Square from 4 p.m., sunset at 6:01, dinner after.

Day two belongs to Dry Tortugas: check-in before 7:30 a.m., ferry out at 8, 70 miles west, back in the evening. If the sky turns, and 3.3 days in an average January bring measurable rain, swap the boat to the other day and give this one to the wooden grid: the free Duval Loop between its 18 stops, the museum, the pie you were saving. Our Dry Tortugas guide covers the crossing in full.

Key West in January vs December and February

December is the warmest of the three by day and by night, 77.7°F and 68.3°F, and it holds the warmest sea at 77.6°F. January is the coolest on both air readings, 75.8 and 65.5. Rainfall falls steadily through the winter, 2.16 inches to 1.83 to 1.54, but January still counts the most measurable rain days of the three at 3.3, against December’s 3.1 and February’s 2.4. February owns the coolest water, 76.3°F, two tenths under January.

Move four weeks forward and February buys you 1.6 degrees on the daytime high, roughly a sixth less rain and nearly a full day fewer of it, for two tenths of a degree given back in the water. Move four weeks back and December hands over the warmest air and the warmest sea of the winter, along with the holiday weeks and 2.16 inches of rain. For a trip built around one offshore crossing and a lot of walking, February gives the better odds on weather and January the warmer sea of the two.

Is January a good time to visit Key West?

Yes for anyone who wants a warm, dry, hurricane-free week with the water above 76°F and the whole island walkable from one bed. No for two kinds of traveler: swimmers who want bathwater, because 76.5°F is pleasant rather than tropical and an hour of snorkeling proves it, and bargain hunters, because this is the Keys’ demand season and the room bill carries 11% in tax on top of whatever the rate is.

If the objection is weather, February is the month to slide into: 77.4°F days, 1.54 inches of rain and 2.4 measurable rain days against January’s 3.3. If the objection is cost, our Florida calendar sets out the quieter shoulder weeks, with the standing reminder that anything from June through November falls inside hurricane season.

One thing January holds alone among the three: its average sea surface, 76.5°F, runs warmer than its average daytime high of 75.8°F. December and February both reverse that. In January, the sea is the warm part of the day.

The last word

Decide how you arrive before you decide anything else. EYW puts you on the island with no car to park at $48 a day. Driving from Miami means about 155 miles and close to four hours without stops, six to eight with them, starting on the all-electronic Homestead Extension of the Turnpike down to Florida City, then US-1 alone for the last 113 miles of bridges. If you drive, stop at Marathon: two restored miles of the old Seven Mile Bridge are open to walkers, with a car park at that end and Pigeon Key out in the middle. There is nowhere safe to stop on the new one.

Sources & data for this guide

• January normals: high 75.8°F, low 65.5°F, 1.83 in · NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 monthly normals, station USW00012836, Key West International Airport · checked Sep 23, 2026
• Rain days (3.3 at 0.10 in, 0.4 at 1.00 in) and the December and February columns · same NOAA NCEI normals series · checked Sep 23, 2026
• Sea surface 76.5°F, mean of daily maxima 2015-2024 · Open-Meteo Marine API · checked Sep 23, 2026
• Daylight 10h 49m, sunrise 7:11 a.m. and sunset 6:01 p.m. on January 15 · sunrise-sunset.org, converted from UTC to America/New_York · checked Sep 23, 2026
• Hurricane season dates and the September 10 peak · NOAA National Hurricane Center · checked Sep 23, 2026
• Monroe County 5.0% transient rental tax with the 6% state sales tax · Florida Department of Revenue, form DR-15TDT · checked Sep 23, 2026
• Parking rates (meters, Old Town Garage, Mallory Square, Key West Bight) · City of Key West Parking Department · checked Sep 23, 2026 · rates change
• Hemingway Home hours and $19 / $7 admission, and the Snow White lineage of the cats · hemingwayhome.com, the museum’s own account and the only source we found on the cats · checked Sep 23, 2026
• Fort Zachary Taylor fees, 8 a.m. to sundown opening and the 5 p.m. fort closing · Florida State Parks · checked Sep 23, 2026
• Yankee Freedom III schedule and 2026 adult fare of about $250 · drytortugas.com · checked Sep 23, 2026 · fare subject to change
• Duval Loop: free, 18 stops, no airport service · City of Key West and local guides · checked Sep 23, 2026 · sources diverge on frequency and hours, so we give the range and send you to the stop sign
• Distances and drive time from Miami, and the old Seven Mile Bridge walkway · Florida Turnpike, AARoads and Florida Rambler · checked Sep 23, 2026 · durations are indicative
• Mile Marker 0 and the distance to Fort Kent, Maine · Atlas Obscura and Key West Travel Guide · checked Sep 23, 2026 · sources give 2,369 or 2,390 miles, so we round to about 2,370
• Itineraries, packing notes and the verdict are editorial; hours, fares and taxes change · confirm with each operator when you book.

To plan your stay

• Things to Do in Key West: Hours, Prices, Hemingway House and the Dry Tortugas Ferry
• Where to Stay in Key West: Old Town, New Town and What Parking Costs
• Key West Airport to Old Town: Transfers, Parking and the Drive from Miami
• What to Know Before You Go to Key West: Parking, the Free Duval Loop, Sunset and the Dry Tortugas Ferry

Nearby places

• Everglades National Park: The Complete Visitor's Guide
• Big Cypress National Preserve: Dark Sky Park, Swamp Buggies and the $100 ORV Permit
• Dry Tortugas National Park: Ferry, the $15 Entrance Fee and Camping on Garden Key