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WhenToVisitParks

Editorial Policy

Last updated: June 2026

This page explains who is behind WhenToVisitParks, how our pages are produced, and the standards every page on whentovisitparks.com is held to. We publish it so readers, journalists, and search engines can judge our work by a clear, stated process rather than guesswork.

Who runs WhenToVisitParks

WhenToVisitParks is an independent publication built and maintained by the WhenToVisitParks Team. We are not funded, owned, or directed by any of the agencies, companies, or organizations that appear in our data. We do not accept paid placements, sponsored rankings, or fees to add, alter, or remove an entry. Our editorial judgment is not for sale.

How our content is produced

WhenToVisitParks covers crowd levels and the best time to visit US national parks. Our pages are assembled programmatically from the National Park Service Visitor Use Statistics program and the NOAA NCEI U.S. Climate Normals (1991–2020): we fetch the primary records, process them with documented, repeatable methods, and render them as pages a non-specialist can read. For every NPS unit that reports monthly visitation (1979–present), we compute a crowd index where 1.0 equals that park\'s average month, then identify its busiest and quietest months and its multi-decade trend. We match each park to the nearest NOAA climate-normals station for monthly temperature, precipitation and snowfall, and compute average daylight hours from latitude. The Best Time to Visit Score combines crowd avoidance (40%), weather comfort (45%) and daylight (15%); the headline recommendation surfaces the shoulder-season month with good weather but below-median crowds. Weights are published and the underlying data is public domain.

We are transparent that this is a data-publishing operation, not a wire service of on-the-ground reporters. Where we add narrative, that narrative describes and interprets the underlying public data — it never invents facts the data does not contain. Automated assembly is reviewed against the source, and the methodology behind any score or ranking is documented and linkable.

Editorial standards

  • Primary source only. Every figure traces back to the National Park Service Visitor Use Statistics program and the NOAA NCEI U.S. Climate Normals (1991–2020), cited and linkable on the page where it appears.
  • No invented numbers. If a value is not in the underlying public data, it does not appear on whentovisitparks.com. We never generate synthetic statistics to fill gaps.
  • Documented methodology. Rankings, grades, and composite scores are editorial calculations derived from public data using stated, repeatable formulas — not certifications or endorsements.
  • Dated and refreshed. Crowd data is refreshed annually when the National Park Service publishes the prior year\'s monthly visitation; climate normals update on NOAA\'s decadal cycle.
  • Corrections welcome. When a reader or the source identifies an error, we fix it — see our Corrections Policy.

Verification and fact-checking

Because our numbers come straight from the National Park Service Visitor Use Statistics program and the NOAA NCEI U.S. Climate Normals (1991–2020), our verification work is about faithful processing rather than re-reporting. The detail of how we check figures before publication is described in our Fact-Checking Policy.

Ownership and funding transparency

WhenToVisitParks is part of a small portfolio of independent public-data sites. The site is free to read and carries no display advertising. We do not sell personal data. Where an outbound link is an affiliate link, it is disclosed and never changes our editorial judgment.

Contact

Questions about how a page was produced, or about these standards? hello@whentovisitparks.com. See also our About page and our Corrections Policy.