Parks / Mount Rainier
When to visit
Mount Rainier.
The park drew an average of 1.5M recreation visits a year over 2016–2025. July is the busiest month at 24.5% of the year's visits, and February the quietest — 22.3× fewer people.
Crowds
July averages 372,558 recreation visits against 16,736 in February. 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
August is the warmest month at 8,392 feet, averaging a daily high of 55°F, and February the coldest at 18°F with lows near 8°F. December is the wettest at 17.7 inches, July the driest at 1.
Daylight runs from 8h 36m in December to 15h 48m in June, a difference of 7h 12m of usable time in a day.
Snow shows up in every month except July and August. 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 8,392 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 | 22° | 12° | 20 | 18 | 9h 0m | 24,121 |
| February | 18° | 8° | 21 | 20 | 10h 18m | 16,736 |
| March | 22° | 11° | 19 | 17 | 12h 0m | 26,118 |
| April | 27° | 15° | 17 | 15 | 13h 36m | 30,160 |
| May | 36° | 23° | 14 | 9 | 15h 6m | 83,716 |
| June | 43° | 28° | 11 | 5 | 15h 48m | 204,578 |
| July | 53° | 37° | 5 | 0 | 15h 24m | 372,558 |
| August | 55° | 39° | 7 | 0 | 14h 6m | 367,792 |
| September | 47° | 32° | 10 | 3 | 12h 30m | 213,787 |
| October | 35° | 23° | 15 | 9 | 10h 54m | 112,286 |
| November | 26° | 15° | 20 | 16 | 9h 24m | 39,830 |
| December | 21° | 12° | 21 | 20 | 8h 36m | 25,892 |
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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