This Week in Yellowstone National Park
Oct 8, 2026 · 38 min · 13 segments
This week in Yellowstone National Park, from October 8th to October 14th, 2026, I’ll let you know about some major road closures, tell you why the cold weather in the forecast is something to be…
Anyway, let's jump into this week's news.
First news story that I'm going to talk about this week is that September visitation is up for most years.
In September of this year, Yellowstone hosted 868,450 recreation visits, which is a 3% increase versus September of 2025.
It's also the second highest September visitation in park history.
It is 2% lower than September of 2021, which is the record, and that had 882,000.
So 868,450 visits.
is what September saw in August of 2026 was 856,467.
And that, if you are good with numbers, has September with 12,000 more visitors than August, which I don't like to always say like I told you so to people because most of you know me, so I'm not telling you anything you don't know.
But a lot of people will look at me when I tell them that September is just as busy If not busier than August, and they will call me a liar.
But the numbers speak for themselves.
So I just wanted to bring that up.
For the year, we're still at 4.3 million recreation visits.
And it doesn't look like we're going to break 5 million.
As October is going to get about 320,000 probably this year, November usually sees 24,000, 25,000, and December is around 35,000.
So it's going to be under 5 million, but it's still going to be a pretty busy year overall.
However, we could see a decrease in visitation in the next week for the rest of the month if the weather holds, but I'll talk about that during the weather section.
Speaking of some sort of weather information before I talk about that too much, Beartooth Highway is now closing on the 11th of this month.
It was supposed to be the 13th, but we have an incoming snowstorm that's going to dump snow in the region.
The 10th is the last day you can drive it full stop.
Well, in 2026.
Now full stop.
Along those same lines, it appears as if Dunraven Pass, which connects Tower to Canyon... is going to be closing on October 12th, if not earlier, with this incoming storm.
So that's going to be a long detour after the 12th, if not earlier, with this incoming snowstorm.
Anyway, let's jump into this week's news.
First news story that I'm going to talk about this week is that September visitation is up for most years.
In September of this year, Yellowstone hosted 868,450 recreation visits, which is a 3% increase versus September of 2025.
It's also the second highest September visitation in park history.
It is 2% lower than September of 2021, which is the record, and that had 882,000.
So 868,450 visits.
is what September saw in August of 2026 was 856,467.
And that, if you are good with numbers, has September with 12,000 more visitors than August, which I don't like to always say like I told you so to people because most of you know me, so I'm not telling you anything you don't know.
But a lot of people will look at me when I tell them that September is just as busy If not busier than August, and they will call me a liar.
But the numbers speak for themselves.
So I just wanted to bring that up.
For the year, we're still at 4.3 million recreation visits.
And it doesn't look like we're going to break 5 million.
As October is going to get about 320,000 probably this year, November usually sees 24,000, 25,000, and December is around 35,000.
So it's going to be under 5 million, but it's still going to be a pretty busy year overall.
However, we could see a decrease in visitation in the next week for the rest of the month if the weather holds, but I'll talk about that during the weather section.
Speaking of some sort of weather information before I talk about that too much, Beartooth Highway is now closing on the 11th of this month.
It was supposed to be the 13th, but we have an incoming snowstorm that's going to dump snow in the region.
The 10th is the last day you can drive it full stop.
Well, in 2026.
Now full stop.
Along those same lines, it appears as if Dunraven Pass, which connects Tower to Canyon... is going to be closing on October 12th, if not earlier, with this incoming storm.
So that's going to be a long detour after the 12th, if not earlier, with this incoming snowstorm.
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