Things to Do in Palm Springs in March

March is the best weather of the year and the busiest month the valley has. The tennis tournament at Indian Wells runs for two weeks, the hotels fill, and the wind picks up.

It is also the month Palm Springs spent the late eighties trying to cancel.

The tennis is the biggest thing here that is not a music festival

The BNP Paribas Open at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden runs about two weeks, ending around the second Sunday of March, and some years it starts in late February. The City of Indian Wells describes it as the largest two-week combined event outside the four Grand Slams. A recent edition drew 504,268 people.

You will see it called the fifth Grand Slam. That is a nickname, not a status.

Larry Ellison bought the tournament outright in December 2009 — the event, the stadium, the whole complex — reportedly for around $100 million, beating bids that would have moved it to Abu Dhabi or Qatar. It is the reason the tournament is still in the desert.

What locals do at the tennis

Two things, neither of which involves a reserved seat.

Qualifying week, before the main draw, has $10 tickets for every day and the proceeds go to charity. It is the same grounds, the same practice courts, a fraction of the people.

And a grounds pass is genuinely good value the rest of the time. It covers unreserved seating in the smaller stadiums plus all the practice courts, and the practice courts are open to anyone with any ticket. You can stand a few feet from players you would need a stadium ticket and binoculars to see an hour later.

More: the BNP Paribas Open guide · what to eat there · the Tennis Garden

More on the tennis: how the schedule and order of play work · grounds pass or stadium ticket · parking, gates and rideshare

The 2001 final

On 17 March 2001 Serena Williams won the Indian Wells final over Kim Clijsters and was booed for most of it. Venus had withdrawn from their semifinal four minutes before it was due to start, the crowd decided the sisters had fixed it, and they took it out on the one who showed up — booing her family in the stands and cheering her errors. Richard Williams said racial slurs were directed at him.

Serena did not come back for fourteen years. She returned in 2015, Venus in 2016. It is a long time for a tournament to be missing the two best players in the sport, and it is worth knowing if you are standing in that stadium.

The wind is a regulatory problem, not a mood

Spring is the wind season, and the reason is the San Gorgonio Pass. Air forced through a gap in the mountains funnels into the valley — regularly over 40 miles an hour — and picks up the desert floor on the way. Air quality regulators treat these spring wind events as their own category of pollution event, which tells you the dust is not incidental.

The turbines you drive past are also disappearing, even as the wind farm produces more. When the Bureau of Land Management approved a repower project northwest of Palm Springs, the plan was to pull out roughly 460 old turbines and put up as many as nine new ones. About fifty of the small ones per one of the big ones.

More: why is it so windy in the Coachella Valley

Spring break, and Bono’s No No’s

On a Saturday in late March 1986 a water balloon fight on Palm Canyon Drive turned into a riot. Crowds surrounded cars and rocked them, women were assaulted, bottles and rocks went at the police, an officer was knocked unconscious, and it ended in tear gas. There were about 35 officers on duty.

Sonny Bono ran for mayor on it and won, serving from 1988 to 1992. He put the annual cost to the city at around half a million dollars and went after it with a list the local press called Bono’s No No’s: water balloons and squirt guns banned, motorcycles off Palm Canyon, mandatory crosswalks, a $15 surcharge on spring break citations, 200 concrete barriers, and Highway 111 rerouted so downtown could be closed outright. In 1991 came the one that made national news — a ban on thong bikinis on city streets, which earned him the nickname Mayor Bonehead.

It worked, in the sense that the crowds went to Lake Havasu and Cabo instead. Then the recession came, and from 2009 the city started advertising for spring break again.

One thing to retire: Palm Springs did not invent spring break. That was Fort Lauderdale, with a college swim team, in the 1930s.

The numbers, and a plan

Average high 81, average low 54, about half an inch of rain. This is the month the weather does exactly what the brochure says.

• Get outside early and often. March is the last month of comfortable midday hiking.
• If you are going to the tennis, go on a qualifying day or buy a grounds pass and follow the practice courts.
• Book everything. This is the valley’s highest-revenue month for hotels and it behaves like it.
• Expect at least one afternoon where the wind ruins the patio. It is not personal.

More guides

• Things to do in Palm Springs this weekend
• April in Palm Springs
• February in Palm Springs
• St Patrick’s Day in Palm Springs
• Where to watch March Madness
• The best hikes in Indian Canyons

Weather figures are NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals for Palm Springs International Airport. Hours and dates change; check the operator before you go.