Things to Do in Palm Springs in September

September is the month the valley looks like it should be cooling down and is not. The average high is 101.8. The record for the month is 122, which is two degrees off the all-time record for any month.

It is also the month the Aerial Tramway has a birthday, and the month the desert has historically taken its worst soaking.

September is not autumn here

Average high 101.8, average low 74. September still averages triple digits.

The record high for the month is 122, set on 5 September 2020. The all-time record for Palm Springs in any month is 124. September is capable of getting within two degrees of the worst the desert has ever done.

What does change is the shape of the month. The first half behaves like August. The last week starts to hint at something else. Nothing about the first three weeks of September should be planned as though the heat has broken.

The tram opened on 12 September 1963

The first public ride up the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway ran on 12 September 1963, with dignitaries and celebrities aboard, finishing a project Francis Crocker had been pushing for decades.

The rotating cars are not original and are much newer than people assume — they arrived in September 2000, out of a modernisation programme announced two years earlier.

The numbers still do the work: Valley Station at 2,643 feet, Mountain Station at 8,516, about 6,000 feet of climb in a ten-minute ride, and a mountain that runs 30 to 40 degrees cooler than the floor.

More: the Aerial Tramway · the tram used to have a mascot

It closes in September, and not for the reason you think

The tram does not close for heat. It never has. It runs right through the hottest weeks of the year on extended evening hours.

What it does do is shut for roughly three to four weeks of preventative maintenance — state-permit testing, control systems, gearbox work, cable testing — and that closure is scheduled in late summer or early autumn. Some years it runs August into September, some years September into early October.

If the tram is the reason you are coming in September, check its dates before you book anything. It is the one month of the year where that is a real risk.

The wettest summer month on record is September

Not August, despite Hilary. September 1939 put 4.88 inches on Palm Springs, and it is still the record.

That September was extraordinary and it is worth knowing why the record has stood so long. A sequence of tropical systems came through: heavy rain across the deserts in the first week, four inches in the mountains and deserts around the 11th and 12th, up to three inches more the following week, and then on 24 to 26 September the storm they called El Cordonazo — nearly seven inches in three hours at Indio from one thunderstorm, 9.65 inches at Raywood Flat, an inch and a half on Palm Springs.

It happened again on a smaller scale in September 1997, when the remains of Hurricane Nora dropped three inches on Twentynine Palms and up to two on the Coachella Valley.

The valley does not reopen on Labor Day

This is the most useful thing on this page. The idea that the season starts again after Labor Day is wrong, and everything measurable says so.

• Riverside County’s cool centers stay open through 15 October.
• VillageFest keeps its 7 p.m. summer start through September and does not go back to 6 until October.
• Indian Canyons and Tahquitz Canyon stay Friday-to-Sunday only until 1 October.
• The Living Desert keeps summer hours until the end of the month.
• The city’s hotel tax take goes from roughly $1.9 million in September to $2.8 million in October to $3.3 million in November.

The season starts in October. September is the last month of summer wearing an autumn label.

What September is good for

• Rates, still. September is priced as a summer month and behaves like one. October is not.
• The last quiet weeks. Everything that is open is empty.
• Watching for the switch. The last week of September is when patios start filling again in the evening.
• The tram, if it is running. Check first.

More guides

• Things to do in Palm Springs this weekend
• October in Palm Springs
• August in Palm Springs
• Labor Day weekend
• Palm Springs weather myths

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