The crowd finds shade at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at Empire Polo Club in Indio, Calif., on April 11, 2025. 

The thousands of people flocking to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on Friday and bracing for the desert’s scorching heat are in for a surprise.

A weather shift, beginning late Friday and lasting through Sunday, matches the timeframe of the festival’s first chapter. National Weather Service forecasters report cooler temperatures, clouds, wind and even a slight chance of light rain in the Coachella Valley over the weekend.

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That’s a drastic change from the recent sweltering temperatures in Indio, the city that hosts the festival. In March, climate sites in Indio and nearby Thermal hit 108 degrees, setting a new high for the hottest day ever recorded during that month in California. 

“Looks like it’s really going to cool off this weekend,” Adam Roser, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s San Diego office, told SFGATE. “There’s an area of low pressure off........

© SFGate