Hello, I'm thinking about travel to the Netherlands the week after new year in January. We'd like to visit the museums in Amsterdam and other cities. My question relates to the weather this time of year - how cold, windy and snowy is it? Wondering if we should put off for another time of year. Thanks very much!
Posted by
Green Bay
20017 posts
I've been there twice in January. Once, I noticed a layer of ice had formed on the mud puddles over night.
Posted by
Tel Aviv
15576 posts
It certainly won't be as cold or as snowy as last winter was in Chicago :-)
It is farther north, so you'll have fewer hours of daylight. It is warmer, so you are more likely to have rain than snow.
Try the Weather Underground. It takes a few steps to get to the information (now that they've "improved" their site). Start at wunderground.com/history and enter "Amsterdam". On the next screen, on the right is the "Trip Planner" - Put in a January date. On the next screen, on the right is the "Travel Planner" - put in your dates - up to a 2-week period. I put in Jan 1 - Jan 14. You'll get a graph with average temps and if you scroll down, you can see the actual data for each day in that period for the last 15 years.
Posted by
Northamptonshire, England
32702 posts
My friend in Haarlem regularly complains that he no longer is able to skate on the canals in the winter. You can get warm days and you can get cold days; you can get serious storms off the North Sea, or it can be calmer.
But it is not normally cold enough to freeze the canals.
Posted by
IJzendijke, The Netherlands
1966 posts
December 2012 and Januari 2013 we had an unusual long period with snow and temperatures well below 0 °C night and day, in combination with wind not so pleasant. Beginning this year it was the opposite with some light frost during the night and sunny weather with temperatures well above zero, everage some 5 °C I guess. The weather near the coast is softer then more inland. Hard to predict what it will be coming January.