Month by month
Murchison Falls in September
September keeps climbing the rainfall the year has been building since June, even as UWA still counts it as the last dependable month of the second dry season.
If you only want the answer
September is officially the close of Murchison's second dry window, but the thirty-year rain totals already look like the shoulder season that follows it, so book it for quieter tracks rather than for guaranteed dust.
Where the second dry season actually ends
September's normals run to 181 mm over 19 days, higher again than August and not far off April's wet-season figures, with days at 28.7°C and nights near 19.3°C. UWA still names September as the last dependable dry month of the year, and the thirty-year data suggests that claim is generous: by any measure of rainfall, the dry season here has effectively already given way.
That gap between the label and the numbers is worth knowing rather than worrying about. Animals still favour the river over the freshly wetted plains early in the month, and the Buligi tracks generally hold through September even as the grass starts to recover.
A genuine shoulder, on the water and off it
The launch to the falls and the delta cruise run unaffected by any of this, and September sits at the tail of the June-to-September shoebill window, so treat any delta sighting this month as the last reliable one before the birds get harder to find through October and November.
September also marks where the August rush lets up: lodges across the park, whether Marasa's two properties or the smaller camps around Masindi, remain fully open, and rooms that vanished for August start reappearing on the same booking pages.
The forest option while the savanna turns
Kaniyo Pabidi's chimpanzee tracking and its restricted-range forest birds, chocolate-backed kingfisher and white-thighed hornbill among them, run to their own rhythm inside Budongo's canopy and are largely indifferent to what September's rain is doing on the open plains.
If a morning on the Buligi tracks turns up less than you hoped, a Budongo detour the same afternoon is the practical way to salvage the day, and it adds species to a trip list that a savanna-only itinerary would never touch.