January is the depth of the Vermont winter — short days, subzero nights in the Northeast Kingdom, and deep snow banked across the Green Mountains. The lakes are locked under ice, the sugarbushes wait, and the living nature that remains is hardy, northern, and best met at a feeder or on a bundled snowshoe walk.
Week by week in January
January 1–7
- Feeders are at their winter peak — black-capped chickadees, nuthatches, and cardinals work the seed, while redpolls and pine siskins may arrive in a northern-finch irruption year.
- The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks in a short, sharp burst around January 3; watch the northeast after midnight from a dark Vermont ridge away from town lights.
- A planning week — order seeds early, especially the short-season varieties Northeast Kingdom gardens depend on, before they sell out.
January 8–14
- Bald eagles concentrate on the open water of Lake Champlain and below river dams as the smaller waters freeze solid.
- Orion dominates the southern sky, his belt pointing down to brilliant Sirius — the cold, dry air over the snow makes for crystal-clear viewing.
- Conifers earn their keep now — balsam fir, red spruce, white pine, and hemlock hold the only green on the white-and-gray hillsides.
January 15–21
- Snowy owls may turn up on the open Champlain Valley farm fields and lakeshore, hunting from fence posts and rises in the daylight.
- On the coldest, clearest nights, scan the northern horizon for the aurora borealis, which Vermont's latitude catches more often than most of the Lower 48.
- Leave snow banked over perennial beds as insulation, and gently knock heavy wet snow off arborvitae and evergreens to prevent breakage.
January 22–28
- Snow buntings and horned larks swirl over windswept open fields, flashing white as they wheel and settle to feed on weed seed.
- The Winter Hexagon — Sirius, Capella, Aldebaran, Rigel, Procyon, and Pollux — sprawls across the long, dark January sky.
- On a calm, mild day, prune apple and other fruit trees while they're fully dormant and disease pressure is at its lowest.
Birds This Month
January birding in Vermont centers on the feeder. Black-capped chickadees, white-breasted and red-breasted nuthatches, tufted titmice, and downy and hairy woodpeckers are constant, joined by northern cardinals and blue jays blazing against the snow. In irruption winters the boreal forest empties south and suet feeders fill with northern finches — common redpolls, pine siskins, evening grosbeaks, and the heavy-billed pine grosbeaks stripping crabapples and mountain-ash berries.
For winter specialties, head to open country and water. Bald eagles concentrate along the open stretches of Lake Champlain and the unfrozen rivers below dams, and snowy owls turn up some years on the Champlain Valley farm fields and lakeshore. The Kingdom's spruce woods may hold boreal chickadees and crossbills in a good cone year, while snow buntings and horned larks swirl over windswept fields.
This month's tip: keep feeders full and snow-free through cold snaps — birds depend on them most when temperatures fall below zero, and a heated birdbath offers the open water that no amount of seed can replace.
What's Blooming
Nothing blooms outdoors in a Vermont January — the ground is frozen hard beneath snow, and the first spring ephemerals are months away. What the season offers instead is structure and color held in the dormant landscape: the crimson stems of red-osier dogwood bright against the snow along stream edges, the persistent fruit of winterberry holly and staghorn sumac, and the tan, rattling seed heads of goldenrod and aster standing through the drifts. The dark green of balsam fir, red spruce, and eastern hemlock carries the only living color through the hills. Indoors, this is amaryllis and forced-paperwhite season, and the catalog-dreaming weeks when Vermont gardeners plan the beds they cannot yet touch. Watch south-facing windowsills, where houseplants lean toward the strengthening but still-low winter light.
Garden This Month
January gardening in Vermont happens at the kitchen table. The beds are frozen and snow-covered statewide, so this is the planning month: order seeds (especially the short-season varieties northern gardens depend on), sketch next year's layout, and check stored bulbs, dahlia tubers, and tender roots for rot. It's also a safe window to prune apples and other fruit trees on a calm, mild day, and to prune oaks while they're dormant and oak-wilt risk is lowest.
Leave the snow where it falls over perennial beds — it's the best insulation a Vermont garden gets, holding soil temperatures steady and protecting crowns from the freeze-thaw cycles that kill more plants here than cold alone. Knock heavy, wet snow gently off arborvitae and evergreen branches to prevent breakage, but never the dry, fluffy stuff, and watch for deer browsing young trees as the winter wears on.
Zone 3b (Northeast Kingdom & high country): the garden is fully dormant under deep snow, which is your best insulation — leave it banked over perennials. Order seeds early; the short-season northern varieties Kingdom gardens depend on sell out, and you'll want them ready for an early indoor start.
Zone 4b (much of central Vermont & the valleys): nothing to plant outdoors, but it's the right time to inventory seeds, sharpen and oil tools, and check that snow cover and mulch are protecting marginal perennials and fall-planted bulbs through the cold.
Zone 5a (lower Champlain Valley): Vermont's warmest corner is still deep-frozen — focus on planning, pruning apples and oaks during their safe dormant window, and starting onions and leeks indoors very late in the month if you want an early start.
What's at the Farmers Market
Vermont's outdoor farmers markets are closed, but the winter-market scene is real and growing. Indoor winter markets — the Burlington and Montpelier winter markets among them — and farm stands keep selling the durable harvest: storage onions, garlic, carrots, beets, parsnips, potatoes, cabbage, and winter squash cured in the fall and keeping for months. Vermont apples from cold storage are still eating well.
This is prime cheese and dairy season — the state's farmstead cheddars, aged rounds, and fresh chèvre are at the heart of every winter market — alongside last spring's maple syrup, local honey, eggs, grass-fed meats, and cold-hardy greens from heated hoop houses. Store roots in a cool, dark, humid spot and squash somewhere cool and dry, and keep cheese in waxed paper rather than plastic; all of it will easily outlast the deepest January cold.
Night Sky This Month
January gives Vermont its longest, darkest nights, and the cold, dry mountain air is exceptionally clear — winter is prime stargazing if you can stand the temperatures. Orion dominates the southern sky, his belt pointing down to brilliant Sirius, the brightest star in the night. Above and to the right, orange Aldebaran in Taurus sits beside the little dipper of the Pleiades cluster, while the bright pair of Gemini climbs the east and the great Winter Hexagon of first-magnitude stars sprawls across the sky.
The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks in early January (around January 3) in a short, sharp burst best seen after midnight from a dark site — and Vermont's rural ridges and the Kingdom offer some of the darkest skies in the Northeast. On the coldest, clearest nights, watch the northern horizon for the aurora borealis, which Vermont's northern latitude catches more often than most of the Lower 48.
Exact planet positions and this year's specific meteor-peak dates shift from year to year — the printable Vermont night-sky guide lists the dates and visibility for your part of the state.
Butterflies & Pollinators
A January walk in the Vermont woods is a search for where the cold-hardy butterflies are hidden, not a hunt for ones in flight. Three northern anglewings ride out the winter here as full-grown adults, frozen nearly solid yet alive: the mourning cloak, the eastern comma, and the question mark. Look for their shelters where they overwinter — wedged into the deep bark furrows of old sugar maples in the hillside sugarbush, tucked under the loose, plated bark of dead eastern hemlocks in the cool ravines, slipped into the chinks of dry-laid stone walls and woodpiles, and folded into hollow snags. Their tissues flood with glycerol and sorbitol that act as antifreeze, dropping their freezing point so they survive the subzero nights of the Worcester Range and the Northeast Kingdom intact.
This deep-frozen dormancy is why Vermont's first butterfly of the year is so early: on the first thawed, sunny afternoon of late March, usually in the milder Champlain Valley clay plain, a mourning cloak can drop from its hiding place and bask on a bare south-facing trunk before a single flower has opened — drinking running sugar-maple sap and the seepage of broken branches instead of nectar. The summer's other species pass January very differently and out of sight: the eastern tiger swallowtail hangs as a bark-mimicking chrysalis lashed to a twig, the great spangled fritillary waits as a tiny just-hatched caterpillar dormant in the leaf litter, and the monarchs that fed on Vermont milkweed are generations and a continent removed, wintering far to the south.
What to plant for them is in the Vermont native plants guide
Trees This Month
Vermont's trees are fully dormant, and winter is when the conifers earn their keep. Balsam fir, red spruce, and eastern hemlock hold the only deep green across the high Green Mountains and the Northeast Kingdom, their dark crowns a relief in a white-and-gray landscape. The deciduous trees stand bare, and their winter forms become identifiable: the smooth gray trunks of American beech, the white peeling bark of paper birch against the snow, and the broad, branchy crowns of roadside sugar maples that will run with sap in just a few weeks.
Look for last fall's pale, papery leaves still clinging to young beeches and red oaks, a trait called marcescence, and notice the tamaracks in the bogs — leafless now, the only deciduous conifer in the north, having dropped their gold needles back in late October. Wind and ice load the bare branches, and the woods are quiet but for the woodpeckers.
Weather & Daylight
Across Vermont, a typical January day averages a high near 27°F and a low near 8°F, with about 3.1 inches of precipitation — statewide averages from the 1991–2020 U.S. climate normals.
Bitter cold settles in, with highs near 27F and lows around 8F that make bare skin sting within minutes outdoors.
| Average high | 27°F |
|---|---|
| Average low | 8°F |
| Precipitation | 3.1 in |
| Sunrise (mid-month) | 7:22 ET |
| Sunset (mid-month) | 16:37 ET |
Figures are statewide averages over the 1991–2020 U.S. climate normals; local conditions vary with elevation and distance from the coast. Sunrise and sunset are computed for a midstate point on the 15th (ET).
Next month's version of this page, by email
One short note when Vermont's next month turns — what's arriving, blooming, and worth a night outside.
Go deeper with the Vermont guides
The complete Vermont birding, native-plant, and night-sky references — or the whole year, week by week, in one book.
Same month elsewhere: January in Virginia · January in Washington · January in West Virginia