Month by month
Queen Elizabeth in January
January is the month UWA names as one of the two driest of the year. The thirty-year record puts it fourth, behind June, July and February, which makes it a good month for reasons slightly different from the official ones.
If you only want the answer
January averages 32 mm of rain over two rain days and afternoons of 28.3 degrees, so the tracks are firm and the southern murram to Ishasha is dependable. UWA calls it one of the two driest months of the year; the climate normals disagree and put June at 18 mm and July at 24 mm ahead of it. Either way it works, and the Palearctic migrants are still in the country.
Queen Elizabeth weather in January: the month UWA calls driest, and what the record says
UWA's General Management Plan reads its Mweya weather station and concludes that the rest of the months are dry with the driest months being January and February. The 1991 to 2020 climate normals taken at the park's coordinates put January fourth in the year at 32 mm across two rain days, behind June at 18 mm, July at 24 mm and level with February at 36 mm. The disagreement is small in absolute terms and it matters mainly because it shapes what people book.
For a visitor the practical reading is straightforward. Thirty-two millimetres over two days is a firm, bright month whatever anyone calls it, and the difference between January and June is 14 mm, which nobody will notice on the ground. Where the two months genuinely differ is heat and price, and January loses on both.
What 32 mm buys you on the ground
The Kasenyi plains are the main beneficiary. They are open grassland on black cotton soil, which is slick and sucking after rain and firm when it has not rained, and they are where the northern lion prides and the Uganda kob concentrations sit. January is a month in which the early and late drives across Kasenyi behave. The same applies to the road south: the roughly 109 km run from Mweya to the Ishasha sector includes long murram sections, and January is one of the months in which the upper end of that range is the realistic figure.
The Mweya peninsula approach is short and maintained, and a two-wheel drive handles it comfortably in a month like this. Everywhere else, a 4x4 remains the sensible vehicle. The northern crater route in particular is one that UWA describes as suffering from poor roads in this section of the park, in any season.
Birds in the country, and prices on the way down
Large numbers of Palearctic waders, gulls and terns are in the park between September and April, so January sits comfortably inside the migrant window on top of a resident list of over 600 species, the longest of any protected area in Uganda. The salt crater lakes in the Kyambura area also take in migrating flamingos from Kenya and Tanzania.
On price, January is high season at the camps that publish one, Ishasha Wilderness Camp among them, so the rates do not drop the way the crowds do. What does end is the Christmas fortnight surcharge: Katara Lodge, for instance, charges an extra $20 per person only from 22 December to 2 January. After the first week of January you are paying high-season rates without the holiday premium on top.