Parks / Badlands
When to visit
Badlands.
The park drew an average of 1.0M recreation visits a year over 2016–2025. July is the busiest month at 23.9% of the year's visits, and December the quietest — 24.7× fewer people.
Crowds
July averages 249,444 recreation visits against 10,113 in December. Visit counts are the National Park Service's own monthly totals for the whole park, so unlike the weather figures below they describe every entrance and every trailhead at once.
Conditions through the year
July is the warmest month at 2,641 feet, averaging a daily high of 88°F, and January the coldest at 34°F with lows near 16°F. May is the wettest at 2.8 inches, January the driest at 0.5.
Daylight runs from 9h 0m in December to 15h 24m in June, a difference of 6h 24m of usable time in a day.
Snow shows up in the record in January, February, March, April, October, November and December. That is snowfall at the grid cell, not road or trail status — parks close roads on their own schedule and conditions, and the park's own alerts are the only authority on what is open.
Those temperatures come from a reanalysis grid cell centred at 2,641 feet. A park that spans a range of elevations is warmer in some places and colder in others than one cell can show, and most parks span a wide one. Read the month-to-month shape — which months run warm, wet or snowy relative to each other — rather than any single figure as the temperature you will meet at a given trailhead.
Every month
| Month | High | Low | Wet days | Snow days | Daylight | Visits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 34° | 16° | 4 | 3 | 9h 24m | 10,795 |
| February | 36° | 16° | 6 | 4 | 10h 30m | 10,571 |
| March | 47° | 27° | 6 | 4 | 12h 0m | 22,062 |
| April | 56° | 35° | 9 | 3 | 13h 30m | 30,167 |
| May | 68° | 47° | 11 | 0 | 14h 48m | 91,950 |
| June | 82° | 60° | 7 | 0 | 15h 24m | 208,808 |
| July | 88° | 65° | 8 | 0 | 15h 6m | 249,444 |
| August | 85° | 63° | 6 | 0 | 13h 54m | 213,824 |
| September | 77° | 55° | 6 | 0 | 12h 30m | 128,723 |
| October | 60° | 40° | 5 | 1 | 11h 0m | 50,704 |
| November | 48° | 30° | 3 | 1 | 9h 42m | 18,689 |
| December | 37° | 20° | 4 | 4 | 9h 0m | 10,113 |
Averages over 10 years, 2016–2025. Wet days count days with at least 0.04″ of precipitation; snow days at least 0.4″ of snowfall.
There is no best month here
This page does not pick one. Crowds and weather alone cannot: in the desert parks the emptiest months are empty because the heat is dangerous, and in the mountain parks the quietest ones are quiet because the roads are shut. What a month has usually been like and what it will be like on your date are also different claims — for the second, the planner reads the live seven-day forecast and the park's own notices.
ParkReady is independent and is not affiliated with the National Park Service. Road, trail and campground status comes from the park, and the park is the only authority on it.
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