What the weather actually does
January is the coldest month Scottsdale has, and I want to be honest about what that means before the brochure version takes over.
Mornings are cold. Not Chicago cold, but 45°F at 7 a.m. with dry air and no cloud cover is colder than it reads on paper, and north Scottsdale routinely runs a few degrees below the airport numbers. A few nights each winter the outlying neighborhoods flirt with frost. Then the sun does its work: by noon you are in the 60s, and a still, windless 67°F afternoon in full desert sun feels like 75. That afternoon is the whole reason people fly here.
Daylight is short, about ten hours. Sunset comes before 6 p.m. and the temperature falls with it. Rain shows up as two or three Pacific storms across the month, usually gray and showery for a day, then gone.
What’s on
The month starts slow and finishes loud. The first week is quiet, with the tail end of Christmas at the Princess still lit up at the Fairmont. Then mid-month the Celebration of Fine Art tents open on Hayden and stay up into March, and the winter arts machine starts turning: Scottsdale ArtWalk every Thursday, Sunday A’Fair concerts on the Civic Center lawn, and the Old Town Farmers Market on Saturdays.
Late January belongs to Barrett-Jackson. WestWorld fills with collector cars and the people who buy them, Loop 101 backs up at Bell Road, and every hotel from Kierland to the Boulders sells out. The Parada del Sol Parade and the Arizona Indian Festival straddle the turn into February. The old Russo and Steele auction used to run alongside all this; it is gone now, but its ghost still explains why the last week of January feels like a car show with a city attached.
What to do
Hike. This is prime hiking weather, and the McDowell Sonoran Preserve is at its best from about 9 a.m. on, once the rock warms up. The Gateway Loop rules apply year-round, but in January you get to do it without a headlamp. Pinnacle Peak is the short, scenic option.
Golf. Courses are in winter overseed condition, which is the greenest they will ever look, and it is the most expensive they will ever be. Read golf without a membership before you book anything.
Ride the Greenbelt. The cycling cut-throughs work best in cool weather, and a lap around Chaparral Lake at sunrise is the local ritual.
Eat outside. Patio season is the point of January. Book FnB or Citizen Public House well ahead, and walk Old Town on foot between them.
What to skip
Skip planning your trip around the pool. It is heated, the air is not, and you will spend more time in the hot tub than you expected.
Skip driving to WestWorld during auction week unless you have a ticket. Skip the last-minute resort booking during the same week; you will be on the far side of the 101 paying peak rates for a mid-tier room.
Skip the assumption that a 67°F forecast means shorts. Bring the jacket. Every year the morning coffee lines in Old Town are full of people in shorts, shivering, learning.
The local’s calendar
Here is how residents actually live January. Schools go back the first full week, so the post-holiday quiet lasts about seven days. Then the snowbirds land. The winter residents from Minnesota, Alberta and Chicago are the reason left-turn lanes on Scottsdale Road get slower, the reason your usual breakfast spot has a wait, and the reason the early-bird dinner hour exists at all. They are also the reason half the restaurants in town are still open, so I do not complain much.
Traffic pattern: Loop 101 from Shea to Bell is the choke point, worst on auction week and any Thursday afternoon. Pima Road becomes the local bypass, which means everyone uses it, which means it is no longer a bypass.
Pool season for residents is over. Backyard pools are somewhere in the 50s and nobody but a golden retriever goes in. Resort pools are heated and populated by tourists doing the thing tourists do.
Resort rates: high now, peak next month. The one real deal window is the first ten days of January, after the holiday guests leave and before Barrett-Jackson arrives. If your dates are flexible, that is the week. Places like Hotel Valley Ho and The Scott in Old Town make sense for a first visit because you can walk everywhere and skip the rental car; see getting around Scottsdale for the case against the car entirely.
If you are coming in from December, you have the holiday lights and the quiet weeks in your favor. If you push into February, you get the Phoenix Open, spring training, and the best weather of the year, priced accordingly.