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Month by month

Best time to visit Murchison Falls National Park

UWA points visitors at two dry windows, December to late February and June to September, when the animals draw in towards the Nile. A second recommendation, less often heard: January to March is both the best birding of the year and the quietest the park gets.

If you only want the answer

December to February, and the two halves of it are not the same trip. The bush thins out and the game walks to water, but February averages 33.9 degrees in the afternoon. Early in the window you are more comfortable, late in it you see more.

Prime Dry but hot Shoulder Green season Bar height is average rainfall, the figure above it is the daytime high. The $ signs show what a night in the park runs in that period.

The year, season by season

The periods below are how this park actually divides its year, with thirty-year climate averages against each month. Averages hide bad years: a dry January still happens, and so does a wet July.

January$$

Dry-season viewing after the Christmas fortnight empties out; standard rates.

Dry but hot

Deep in the dry season. Game pulls onto the Nile, birding is at its best and visitor numbers are low. Hot, with little relief after dark.

  1. January 32.4° day, 20.0° night 28 mm over 5 wet days

February$$

The hottest, clearest month at standard rates.

Dry but hot

The hottest stretch of the year and, for game viewing, the clearest. Grass is short or burnt off and visibility across the northern grassland is the best it gets. The dry season usually breaks late in the month.

  1. February 33.9° day, 21.2° night 41 mm over 6 wet days

March$

The rains return and the first discounts appear.

Shoulder

Rain arrives and the grass greens and lengthens. Game viewing slips from excellent to good, but birding stays strong and migrants are still around.

  1. March 31.6° day, 21.2° night 169 mm over 17 wet days

April to May$

Wet-season pricing and an empty park; Aerolink pauses in these months.

Green season Shoulder

The wettest stretch. The murram game tracks deteriorate, tall grass hides smaller antelope and the park is at its emptiest. Discounted low-season primate permits apply nationally in April and May, which matters if you are combining Murchison with Kibale or Bwindi.

  1. April 28.8° day, 20.5° night 215 mm over 24 wet days
  2. May 28.3° day, 20.1° night 146 mm over 21 wet days

June to July$$

The dry spell; June is the data's best month and rates climb with it.

Prime Shoulder

The park dries out and the tracks firm up. July is the historical short dry spell and is reliably driveable. Game viewing improves week by week.

  1. June 28.4° day, 19.5° night 83 mm over 13 wet days
  2. July 27.9° day, 18.7° night 106 mm over 15 wet days

August to September$$$

European holiday traffic lands on the second dry peak; book the north-bank lodges ahead.

Shoulder Green season

The second peak. Grass shortens, animals return to the river, and this is the busiest northern-hemisphere holiday traffic of the year. September is the last dependable dry month.

  1. August 27.7° day, 18.8° night 162 mm over 19 wet days
  2. September 28.7° day, 19.3° night 181 mm over 19 wet days

October to November$

The wettest stretch, the quietest calendar, and Uganda's low-season permit discounts.

Green season

The second rains. Roads degrade again and game disperses. November carries discounted primate permits and is very quiet, which suits some people well.

  1. October 29.1° day, 19.7° night 234 mm over 20 wet days
  2. November 29.4° day, 19.8° night 184 mm over 16 wet days

December$$$

Drying fast, then the Christmas fortnight: the priciest two weeks of the year.

Prime

Drying out through the month and improving steadily. Christmas and New Year is the most expensive and most crowded fortnight in the park's calendar.

  1. December 29.7° day, 19.6° night 57 mm over 9 wet days

Climate figures are Open-Meteo climate normals, 1991 to 2020, measured at 2.225, 31.825. Prime, shoulder and green are worked out against this park's own year, not a fixed threshold: the four months with the least rain, the four with the most, and the rest in between. Full charts on the weather page.

Murchison's year is not the standard one

Almost every article about this park applies Uganda's textbook equatorial calendar: wet in March to May, wet again in September to November, dry in between. Murchison sits further north than the parks that pattern was written for, it is drier, and its rainfall behaves closer to a single long wet season than to two short ones.

UWA's own General Management Plan says so in writing. It describes a wet season that used to run from March to November with a short dry break in July, then adds that this no longer seems to be the case. The same document still prints a two-season rainfall chart, so UWA is hedging against itself. Rain is also unevenly spread across the park: Chobe in the east receives roughly 1,500 mm a year while Paraa in the west gets about 1,100 mm.

So treat the four-season model as a planning heuristic rather than a forecast. It is what UWA's visitor brochure recommends and what every lodge and operator schedules around, and it will not steer you wrong, but do not be surprised by rain in a month labelled dry.

What UWA actually recommends

The authority's advice is short and specific: come in the dry seasons from December to late February or from June to September, when animals concentrate around water points, and note that the prime time for bird watching is January to March, when visitor numbers are at their lowest.

That second half of the sentence is the useful one. Murchison is Uganda's busiest park, and the months UWA singles out for birds are also the months when you share the Buligi tracks with the fewest vehicles. If your trip is flexible and you care about either birds or quiet, aim at February.

Practical consequences

  • Game viewing peaks late in each dry season, roughly late December to February and August to September, when the Nile is the only dependable water and the grass is low enough to see through.
  • The roads are the real seasonal variable, but not in the way UWA's own pages suggest. Those pages still describe the access roads as murram, which stopped being true after the Masindi to Paraa to Buliisa corridor was surfaced with bitumen under a 2018 roads contract. The approaches and the park spine are tar. What still erodes is the game-viewing tracks, and April, May, October and November are the months to worry about.
  • Shoebill in the Nile delta is best in the December to February and June to September dry windows, which lines up neatly with peak game viewing.
  • There is no cool season here. This is one of the hottest parts of Uganda, with days of 25 to 32 °C, nights around 18 °C and average humidity near 60 per cent. Plan drives for the first and last two hours of daylight.
  • Malaria is present year-round in this landscape. Take prophylaxis and cover up at dusk whatever month you choose.

Sources

Where to go next

Wildlife What you can expect to see in each season Entry Fees What a day inside costs, whatever the month Getting There Flights and roads change with the season