The Best Time to Visit Palm Springs

Palm Springs weather is simple: almost always sunny, almost never wet, and the only variable that matters is temperature. Everything else — hotel rates, restaurant waits, whether you can hike at noon — follows from that.

Month by month

January and February: highs in the high 60s to mid 70s, nights in the 40s. Perfect days, cold evenings, heated-pool territory. Modernism Week in February is the busiest non-festival period of the year.

March and April: highs in the 80s to low 90s, warm nights. The best month for most people is March, and it is priced accordingly. The BNP Paribas Open takes March; Coachella and Stagecoach take April weekends. Rates spike hard on those dates.

May: highs in the mid 90s to low 100s. The last comfortable month and one of the best-value periods of the year.

June through September: 105-115F highs, nights above 85F. Hotel rates drop 40-60 percent. Perfectly viable if you plan around the heat, and the pools are empty.

October: the turn. Early October is still hot; by the end of the month it is beautiful and prices have not fully recovered. Arguably the best value-to-weather ratio of the year.

November and December: highs in the 70s, cool nights, holiday demand at Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year, and cheaper weeks between.

Rain and wind

Total annual rainfall is around 5 inches, mostly in winter. Summer monsoon storms in late July and August bring brief downpours and flash flooding in the washes. Wind is the underrated factor — the San Gorgonio Pass funnels it, and spring afternoons can be genuinely blustery, which matters for pool days and for the Aerial Tramway.

Choosing by trip type

Pool and design weekend: March, April, October, November. Hiking and Joshua Tree: November through March. Golf: November through April, or summer dawn rounds. Budget trip: June through September, or the first two weeks of December. Events: February for Modernism Week, April for the festivals, March for tennis.

Dates to know before you book

Modernism Week in February, the BNP Paribas Open across two weeks of March, Coachella across two April weekends, Stagecoach the following weekend, and Palm Springs Pride in November. On all of these, lodging runs at two to four times normal with minimum stays.