Things to Do in Palm Springs in November

November is the best month of the year in Greater Palm Springs and the one most people skip. The weather is as good as March, the rates are not, and the valley has two of its biggest parades within a week of each other.

It is also the month with the widest temperature spread in the record book — 77 degrees between the hottest November day and the coldest.

Seventy-seven degrees of range

The normals are excellent: average high 78.7, average low 53.4, about a fifth of an inch of rain. The valley averages fewer than three days above 90 in the whole month.

The records are something else. The November high is 100 degrees, from 1991. The November low is 23, from 1964. November has produced everything from a heatwave to a hard freeze, and in 2024 it produced no rain at all.

What that means practically: bring a jacket for the evenings and do not assume you will need one in the afternoon.

Pride takes the first full weekend

Greater Palm Springs Pride runs the first full weekend of November, with the parade on Sunday morning at ten. It steps off at Tachevah in the Uptown Design District and runs south down Palm Canyon through downtown to Amado, taking about two hours.

It did not start as a parade. It started in 1986 as Sizzle, a variety show in the Riviera Resort’s ballroom. The first actual parade was in 1992 — 35 entries, down Williams Road to Mesquite and into Demuth Park, nowhere near downtown. It moved to Palm Canyon in 1997, when it was renamed Greater Palm Springs Pride.

If you are coming for it, the parking is the hard part, not the parade.

More: Pride parking and getting home

And Veterans Day takes the eleventh

The Palm Springs Veterans Day Parade is held on 11 November, whatever day that falls on, organised by the city and run through downtown, with a concert and fireworks afterwards at Amado and Palm Canyon. It has been going for nearly thirty years and the city describes it as nationally recognised.

So downtown Palm Springs closes Palm Canyon Drive for a parade twice in the space of about a week, which is a lot of parade for a town of 45,000.

The air museum opened on Veterans Day

Fittingly, the Palm Springs Air Museum opened to the public on 11 November 1996, with two hangars and fourteen aircraft. It has rather more than that now, and it is one of the few indoor attractions in the valley that is genuinely worth a half day.

Thanksgiving

The valley runs two separate races on Thanksgiving morning — one in downtown Palm Springs, one on El Paseo in Palm Desert — and both are charity events that have been going long enough to sell out.

November is the fourth-strongest month of the year for hotel tax in Palm Springs, behind March, April and February. Thanksgiving week is a real peak inside it, and it books early.

More: Thanksgiving weekend in Palm Springs · the In-N-Out stuffing recipe

Why November is the one to book

Compare it with March. Nearly identical weather. March is the highest-revenue hotel month of the year; November is fourth. March has the tennis and the crowds that come with it; November has two parades and a lot of room.

Restaurants take reservations at short notice. The trails are perfect and empty. The canyons are on their full schedule. The evenings are cool enough to want a fire pit, which is the single most pleasant thing about being in this valley.

The only real argument against it is that the days are short.

More guides

• Things to do in Palm Springs this weekend
• December in Palm Springs
• October in Palm Springs
• The best hikes in Indian Canyons
• VillageFest
• Best happy hours in the valley

Weather figures are NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals for Palm Springs International Airport. Records are from the National Weather Service; tax figures are from the City of Palm Springs. Hours and dates change; check the operator before you go.