Things to Do in Palm Springs in August

August is the emptiest month of the year in Greater Palm Springs. It is also the month most likely to flood, which is a strange pair of facts to hold at once.

The heat is effectively the same as July. What changes is how few people are here to experience it.

Four to one

Palm Springs International Airport publishes its monthly passenger numbers, and they describe the valley’s year better than any tourism statistic.

August is the bottom, at roughly 122,000 passengers. July is barely above it. March, the peak, runs around 485,000. Four times as many people come through this airport in March as in August.

That is what the town feels like. Restaurants that are booked solid in March will seat you immediately. Traffic disappears. So does a chunk of the staff, because a lot of the valley’s service economy takes its own summer.

The day it rained three months’ worth

On 20 August 2023 the remains of Hurricane Hilary put 3.18 inches of rain on Palm Springs in a day.

To put that in context: the normal rainfall for July, August and September combined is 0.63 inches. One day delivered five times the entire summer’s normal.

It prompted the first tropical storm watches and warnings ever issued for Southern California. Upstream, Upper Mission Creek took 13.07 inches and Mount San Jacinto 11.75. I-10 closed in Riverside County. Palm Springs declared a local emergency in the middle of the afternoon and closed North Indian Canyon, Gene Autry, Vista Chino, Araby, Golf Club Drive, the Dinah Shore bridge and Highway 111 at Gateway. There were two swift-water rescues and nobody was killed.

One correction, because the story gets told wrong: Hilary was not a tropical storm when it reached California. Post-analysis found it had already degraded to a post-tropical low over northern Baja. It was classified as a tropical storm at the time, which is why everyone remembers it that way.

And it still is not the wettest August

August 1983 holds that record at 4.32 inches. Hilary’s entire month came to 3.23.

The desert has been doing this for a long time. In August 1967 the remnants of that year’s Hurricane Katrina cut La Quinta off for several hours and damaged 150 homes in Palm Desert. Two weeks earlier, two and a half inches fell on Cathedral City in an hour and a half. In August 1941, water stood 30 inches deep in Mecca.

The three roads

Indian Canyon Drive, Gene Autry Trail and Vista Chino all cross the Whitewater Wash at grade. No bridge. The city’s own guidance is that they close with any significant rain — and then close again afterwards for blowsand, a silt the city describes as almost powder-like, which lifts off the surface in the slightest breeze and drifts across the road in a 30 to 45 mile an hour wind.

Water can keep running off the mountain and through those washes for days or weeks after the storm that caused it.

This is enough of a problem that the region won $50 million from the state to build an elevated bridge at North Indian Canyon. As the mayor put it, that road is also the main route to the valley’s only level one trauma center.

Knowing those three street names is the most useful local knowledge in this article.

Still 108

August’s average high is 108.1. July’s is 108.6. Statistically they are the same month.

The record is 122, set on 24 August 1985. Nights average 80, the warmest of the year — August is the month the desert never cools off after dark.

What August is good for

• Price. This is the cheapest month of the year, in a valley full of resorts that were built for a season that is not happening right now.
• The tram. Same as every summer month: ten minutes, 30 to 40 degrees cooler, open late.
• Hatch chiles. The roasters turn up outside valley grocery stores in late summer and the whole parking lot smells like it.
• Space. Every restaurant that is open has a table. Every trail that is open is empty. You will not queue for anything.
• Thunderstorms. If you have never watched one come across the valley from a covered patio, that is an August experience and it is genuinely worth staying up for.

More: hatch chile roasting in the valley · how to get through a heatwave here

More guides

• Things to do in Palm Springs this weekend
• September in Palm Springs
• July in Palm Springs
• Labor Day weekend
• The Palm Springs Aerial Tramway
• Costco crowds by season

Weather figures are NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals for Palm Springs International Airport. Records and storm history are from the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center. Hours and closures change; check the operator before you go.