United States
American crowds follow three-day weekends far more closely than they follow the weather.
When to visit United States
Across United States as a whole, January is typically the calmest month and October the busiest. Crowds are not uniform, though — see how the regions differ below.
The United States is too big for a single season, so the useful question is not when to visit the country but which country you are visiting. The domestic travel calendar, however, is remarkably uniform coast to coast, and it is built out of federal holidays that fall on Mondays. Memorial Day at the end of May and Labor Day at the start of September bracket the American summer; Thanksgiving in late November produces the heaviest few travel days of the year; and Presidents Day and Martin Luther King Jr Day create winter long weekends that fill ski towns and desert resorts.
Layered on that is the school calendar, which is not national. Summer break runs roughly from late May or June to mid or late August, earlier in the south than in the northeast, and spring break is scattered across March and early April by state and by university rather than falling in one week. The practical effect is a month-long smear of family travel in March instead of a single spike.
For most visitors the shoulder months do the heavy lifting: late April to early June, and September into October. Rates in the big cities soften noticeably in January and February, hurricane season on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts runs from June to the end of November with a clear September peak, and the desert southwest inverts the whole logic — Phoenix, Las Vegas and Death Valley are at their most pleasant between November and March and brutal in July.
It is not the same everywhere
A single date means opposite things across the country: in January, Miami and southern California sit in the high teens or low twenties Celsius while Chicago and Minneapolis are below freezing and the Pacific Northwest is in the middle of its rainy season, and in July the desert southwest passes 40°C while San Francisco is fogbound at 18°C and the Gulf coast is humid and hurricane-watching — Alaska and Hawaii then add an Arctic and a tropical climate to the same passport.
Getting around
Distances are continental — New York to Los Angeles is a six-hour flight and roughly a 45-hour drive — so domestic flying is the default, Amtrak is scenic rather than fast outside the Boston–Washington corridor, and outside a handful of dense cities you will need a rental car.
Crowds month by month across United States
Averaged across the 3 destinations we cover — tap a month for the full picture.
Weather across United States
Averaged across our destinations. The spread column shows how far apart the warmest and coolest are.
| # | Average high | Average low | Wet days | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 11°C | 3°C | 8 | ±11° |
| February | 13°C | 4°C | 7 | ±11° |
| March | 16°C | 7°C | 8 | ±11° |
| April | 20°C | 10°C | 6 | ±9° |
| May | 24°C | 14°C | 5 | ±14° |
| June | 28°C | 18°C | 4 | ±19° |
| July | 30°C | 20°C | 4 | ±22° |
| August | 30°C | 20°C | 4 | ±20° |
| September | 27°C | 17°C | 4 | ±14° |
| October | 22°C | 13°C | 4 | ±9° |
| November | 17°C | 8°C | 6 | ±7° |
| December | 12°C | 4°C | 8 | ±8° |
Where we have data in United States
Each city has its own crowd calendar and twelve month pages.
Every month in United States
Country-level tips
- The two most expensive travel windows of the American year are the Wednesday and Sunday around Thanksgiving and the stretch from 20 December to 2 January; airfares roughly double and airports run at capacity.
- Most federal holidays are legislated onto Mondays, which turns them into three-day weekends — book national park lodging, ski towns and coastal rentals for those weekends several months ahead even in otherwise quiet seasons.
- National parks have their own calendar: many high-elevation roads, including Going-to-the-Sun in Glacier and Tioga Pass in Yosemite, stay closed by snow into June, and several parks now require timed-entry reservations released months in advance.
- Sales tax is added at the till rather than shown on the price tag, tipping of 18–20% is expected in restaurants, and hotel rates are quoted before taxes and a nightly resort fee — budget roughly 25% above the advertised number.
Book things to do
United States: tours and tickets in New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, from our booking partner.
Free cancellation
Free cancellation
Affiliate links: if you book through them we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes a crowd score or the order of our recommendations.
Frequently asked questions
When is the best time to visit United States?
The best time to visit United States is around January, when crowds across the country sit near 45/100 and average highs are about 11°C.
What is the quietest month in United States?
January is the quietest month across the destinations we track in United States, averaging 45/100.
When is United States most crowded?
United States peaks in October, when domestic and international travel overlap.