Month by month
Queen Elizabeth in June
June is the driest month of the year in Queen Elizabeth, at 18 mm across a single rain day. UWA's own seasonal calendar does not say so, which is the one thing worth knowing before you book anything else.
If you only want the answer
June averages 18 mm over one rain day, the lowest figure on the thirty-year record for this park and roughly half of January's 32 mm. The full Aerolink schedule returns this month, the southern murram to Ishasha is at its most dependable, and the high-season rates have not arrived yet. On the numbers, this is the best month in the calendar.
Queen Elizabeth weather in June: the driest month of the year, and the official calendar disagrees
Eighteen millimetres over one rain day is the floor of this park's year. The next driest is July at 24 mm, then January at 32 mm and February at 36 mm. Against April's 339 mm, June carries about five per cent of the wettest month's rainfall.
UWA reaches a different conclusion from its own Mweya station. Its management plan names March, April, May and August to November as the wet months and says the rest are dry with the driest months being January and February. That sentence leaves June inside the dry group without singling it out. We are publishing both readings because they come from the same park and the same era, and because the disagreement is small enough that neither one is wrong in any useful sense. What it means in practice is that June gets less attention than its numbers deserve.
The month to do Ishasha
If the tree-climbing lions are the reason you are coming, June is the month with the fewest obstacles between you and them. The run from Mweya to the Ishasha sector is about 109 km with long murram sections, and the circuits inside the sector along the Ishasha and Ntungwe rivers are unsealed and hilly. In June the four to five hour planning figure holds, and the circuits are as firm as they get.
Note what the road does not change. Ishasha is still not a day trip from Mweya, because there and back is eight to ten hours of driving and the lions are only active early and late. Plan an overnight so you get two drives. The population is 20 to 30 individuals according to WCS, Uganda Carnivore Program and UWA monitoring, and UWA's own management plan records that fig trees are the favoured species for climbing, which is what the guides are actually scanning.
Full flights, and the rates have not caught up
Aerolink's reduced schedule covers March, April, May and November. June is the month the full timetable returns, so you are back to four departures from Entebbe rather than one. That still lands you at Kasese, a grass strip with no fuel and no fire service, with another 1.5 to 2 hours by road to Mweya.
On price, June sits in the gap. Ishasha Wilderness Camp counts January, February, July, August, September and December as high season, so June falls outside it. Elephant Plains puts its high season in July, August, September and December. The low-season discounts at Pumba and Topi have ended with May, so June is neither the cheapest nor the most expensive month, while being the driest. That combination is the argument for it.