Death Valley in December
good · a good time to go
The year in Death Valley
Tap a month for its page
- JanJDeath Valley in January: good
- FebFDeath Valley in February: good, busy
- MarMDeath Valley in March: good, busy
- AprADeath Valley in April: sweet spot
- MayMDeath Valley in May: avoid
- JunJDeath Valley in June: avoid
- JulJDeath Valley in July: avoid
- AugADeath Valley in August: avoid
- SepSDeath Valley in September: avoid
- OctODeath Valley in October: sweet spot
- NovNDeath Valley in November: good
- DecDDeath Valley in December: good
- Sweet spot
- Good
- OK
- Avoid
- Busy
Plan this trip
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Flights from
Flights
Your city is a guess from your time zone. Choose your city
Where are you flying from? Choose your city for its flights and fares.
Book with the airline
Where to stay
Book direct
Luxury
Things to do
Car hire
Rent direct
Travel insurance
Check whether your bank card or home insurance already covers this trip.
If the trip needs a visa, the travel agent or visa centre usually sells the cover it asks for.
Mobile data (eSIM)
Your own plan's EU roaming may already cover this.
Renting a pocket Wi-Fi is the other common way to stay connected.
These are sites people in book with. Each opens in a new tab, on the site's own pages.
The numbers
| Daily high | 19°C |
|---|---|
| Nightly low | 11°C |
| Feels like, afternoon | 16°C |
| Rainy days, 1 mm or more | 1 · 14 mm |
| Humidity | 34% |
| Sunshine | 8.3 h/day |
| Daylight | 9.7 h/day |
| Hiking | 29 of 31 days dry and 10–27 °C good |
| Crowds | 80 / 100, higher is quieter |
Ten-year averages for this calendar month. A rainy day is one with at least 1 mm of rain, as a weather station counts it. The model these figures come from drizzles more than a rain gauge, the more so the warmer the month, so its days count from 2 mm, rising to 5 mm in the hottest.
Weather read at Furnace Creek: ten years of ERA5 and ERA5-Land reanalysis, through Open-Meteo's open data.
How busy it gets
Public holidays in December
Holidays crowd a place out and push fares up around them; they count toward the crowd score above.
Death Valley in pictures
i
Tuxyso, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Christian David, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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King of Hearts, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
What to pack
- Warm layers for the evenings, which drop to about 11°C.
- Sun protection: about 8 hours of sunshine a day.
Each line is a threshold over the ten-year figures above, not advice from anywhere else.
Before you go
Type A and B plugs at 120 V. Drives on the right. The currency is the United states dollar. No UK Foreign Office advice against travel. Global Affairs Canada: Exercise normal security precautions. Everything for United States: cost of living, languages, emergency numbers and health.
On arrival in Death Valley: the apps, paying, getting around, tipping and the emergency numbers.
December elsewhere
In December from
The other months at Death Valley
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