L.A.'s Months Ranked by Clear Skies: November Beats June

The order follows NOAA's average count of clear days downtown, meaning days when clouds cover three-tenths of the daytime sky or less.

August is the sunniest month in Los Angeles. May is the gloomiest. And November, a week old as of Saturday, beats June. That's the order you get when you rank L.A.'s 12 months by how many days federal weather records count as clear downtown, and it's a more useful answer than the one the city puts in its pitch.

The pitch is on the Facts About LA page at Discover Los Angeles, which is run by the Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board, the city's official tourism marketer. "Most days are sunny and warm," the page says. It also lists an average of 292 "sunny/partly sunny days" a year and credits the National Weather Service. The verdict: it's complicated. The 292 is a real number, but it only gets that high because it counts partly cloudy days as sunny ones.

The numbers come from NOAA's comparative climate table, which averages 34 years of readings at the downtown station. It counts 186 clear days, 106 partly cloudy days and 73 cloudy ones. Add the first two and you get the board's 292 exactly. Clear days alone come to about 51% of the year downtown. At LAX, where the table averages 60 years, it's 147 clear days, or about 40%.

Those labels are stricter than they sound. The Los Angeles Almanac, which republishes the NOAA averages, explains that a clear day means clouds cover three-tenths of the daytime sky or less. A partly cloudy day runs from four-tenths to seven-tenths. So a "sunny" day in the board's math can be 70% cloud.

The top of the list isn't close. Downtown, August averages 22 clear days and a single cloudy one. July comes next with 21, then September with 18. Those are three of only five months when clear days outnumber all the other days combined. The other two come in at fourth and fifth.

Those two are October and November, at 16 clear days each. November takes fourth because it gets there with one fewer day in the month. Then comes December at 15 and June at 14. That's the hot take I'll defend: in L.A., November is a sunnier month than June. At the airport it isn't even close, 15 clear days to 10.

June is also the entry I'm least sure of. Downtown it ranks seventh, just ahead of January, which also averages 14 clear days but spreads them over a longer month. At LAX, June ties May for the fewest clear days, 10 each, so which weather station you check decides where June lands.

From there it slides. February, March and April average 12 or 13 clear days each. May finishes 12th, with 11 clear days downtown, the fewest of any month, and 12 partly cloudy ones, the most. The board's page also says L.A. has "no unpleasant seasons." Whether May is unpleasant is a matter of taste. Its 11 clear days aren't.

L.A.'s sun is real, but it isn't the region's champion. The same NOAA table gives Phoenix 211 clear days a year and Las Vegas 210. Yuma, Ariz., tops both at 242. San Diego's airport logs 146, one fewer than LAX. That's the Southern California postcard: plenty of sun, and more cloud than the pitch admits.

This fall has run ahead of the averages. In its October climate report for LAX, issued Nov. 1, the National Weather Service's Los Angeles/Oxnard office counted 17 fair days and just 5 cloudy ones. The airport's long-run October average is 13 clear days. November's average there is 15, and the office's next monthly report will show whether this November backs up the hot take.

Source: discoverlosangeles.com, retrieved November 7, 2026. Other sources: www1.ncdc.noaa.gov, laalmanac.com, forecast.weather.gov.