Things to Do in Palm Springs in February

February is the month three big things happen at once. Modernism Week runs eleven days, the Riverside County Fair and National Date Festival takes over Indio, and Presidents Day weekend sits in the middle of both. The valley is as busy as it gets.

It is also the second-wettest month of the year, and it owns the single wettest day ever recorded here.

Modernism Week is bigger than the city it is in

Modernism Week puts its own attendance at roughly 130,000 people across more than 350 events. Palm Springs has about 45,000 residents. For eleven days in February the design crowd outnumbers the city three to one.

It started small and recently. The first official event was in February 2006, after a volunteer effort the year before, and it grew out of two things that already existed: the Palm Springs Modernism Show and Sale at the convention center, and the design symposium the Palm Springs Art Museum’s Architecture and Design Council had been running for years.

The part worth knowing is how the home tours work. They are not a company selling access to houses. They are neighborhood fundraisers, organised by the neighborhoods, and the people letting you walk through their living room usually live there. Across one February festival and one October edition, partner organisations raised over $2.5 million, with more than $864,000 of that from the neighborhood tours alone — going to the historical society, the art museum, the preservation foundation, and in some neighborhoods to food banks, animal shelters and the fire department.

It begins on the second Thursday of February and runs eleven days, spanning two weekends. There is a smaller four-day edition in October.

More: the Modernism Week guide · are the home tours worth it

The Date Festival, and two things everyone gets wrong

Out in Indio, the county fair runs most of February — now in separate Thursday-to-Sunday blocks with dark days between them, not one continuous run.

First correction: the Arabian Nights theme is not local heritage. It is post-war marketing. A hired fair manager introduced it after the Second World War, and the Queen Scheherazade pageant was invented in 1948. In 2023 the fair replaced the pageant’s scholarship with a straightforward scholarship program; what survives is the Arabian Nights Showcase, a performing-arts competition between school programs with a $10,000 grant to the winner.

Second correction, and this one is in every guidebook still: the camel and ostrich races are gone. 2019 was the first year the fair ran without them. The current animal lineup is racing pigs, a stunt dog show, a petting farm, pony rides, a sea lion show, and camel rides. If a listicle tells you to go watch the camel races, it was written from an older listicle.

More: is the Date Festival worth going to

While you are near Indio, the date film

Shields Date Garden in Indio has been running the same presentation about how date palms reproduce since 1951, when Floyd Shields built a theatre for it and titled it The Romance and Sexual Life of the Date. It plays continuously, all day, in a 105-seat room, and it is free. California grows almost all of the country’s dates and most of that is grown within a few miles of that theatre.

The day it rained three and a half inches

Average high 74, average low 50, 1.11 inches of rain. February looks like the best weather month on paper and often is.

Then there is 14 February 2019, which delivered 3.69 inches in a day — the wettest day ever recorded at the Palm Springs airport, wetter than the remains of Hurricane Hilary managed in 2023. It washed out the access road to the Aerial Tramway, which then stayed closed for 46 days at a reported cost of around $4 million. It tore up a stretch of Highway 111 and two people had to be pulled out of the water by helicopter in Cabazon.

This is a desert that does not absorb water. When it rains hard, it goes somewhere fast.

Getting a bed, and Presidents Day

Presidents Day weekend is the busiest weekend of February. Modernism Week spans it and the Date Festival runs its Grand Parade through Indio on the Monday. Anything with a bed in it is booked a long way out.

Worth knowing for perspective: February is busy, but it is not the peak. The city’s own lodging tax collections put March and April well ahead of it. If you want the valley at its absolute fullest, that is spring, not February.

More: Presidents Day weekend · Valentine’s Day · where to watch the Super Bowl

More guides

• Things to do in Palm Springs this weekend
• March in Palm Springs
• January in Palm Springs
• Palm Springs weather myths
• 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. Hours and dates change; check the operator before you go.