The sunniest counties in America in January (50,000 people or more)

Yuma County, Arizona has the sunniest Januarys of the 976 US counties with 50,000 or more people: +3.45 on the USDA sunshine scale, where 0 is the average county and +3 is the top (USDA Natural Amenities Scale).

January is the month that decides whether a place feels sunny. This list ranks counties of 50,000 or more by the USDA Natural Amenities Scale's January sunshine measure: how many standard deviations a county's average hours of January sun sit above the national county average. Zero is the middle of the country, +3 is the top of the scale, and the score is the only county-level sunshine figure the federal government publishes.

Average temperature, annual rainfall and the median home ride alongside, because the sunniest Januarys cluster in the desert Southwest and the real question is what it costs to live there.

See also: Best weather states, ranked by the same data · The mildest-climate counties.

25 of 976 qualifying counties shown. Click a county for its page.

Sources: USDA Natural Amenities Scale (Z-score) · NOAA Climate Normals · Zillow ZHVI 2024. Population: Census 2023 estimates. Recomputed from the county database every day.

What the list shows

The 25 counties come from 5 states. Arizona appears most often, with 11 of the 25. Yuma, AZ leads at +3.45; number 25, San Diego, CA, sits at +2.18, a gap of 1.26 from top to bottom of the table.

Across all 976 counties over the 50,000-person floor, the median value of the ranking column (January Sunshine) is -0.08. Every county on this list is above that middle.

On housing, of the 25 with a Zillow figure, 1 has a median home under $200K and 4 are at $500K or more. The cheapest is Chaves, NM at $175K; the most expensive is Orange, CA at $1197K.

How we rank

Every county with 50,000 or more residents in the Census 2023 estimate is eligible. Counties are ranked by January Sunshine, highest first, from USDA Natural Amenities Scale (Z-score). A county missing any figure in the table is left out rather than scored as zero, which is why 976 of the 3,222 places in the county database qualify. Connecticut’s planning regions are excluded because they are not counties. The table is recomputed from the database every day, so figures here can move as sources update.

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