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 Northern California right now that is coming down the coast through the weekend, bringing that windier and cooler weather.”

FILE: Clouds form over the Coachella Valley in California. 

In Indio, the high of 90 degrees on Friday will drop to the mid-80s on Saturday, followed by Sunday’s upper 70s, according to Roser. The nighttime lows are expected to dip into the 50s. The city also has a less than 10% chance of very light rain showers on both weekend days. Afternoon and evening breezes could reach up to 25 mph.

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At the National Weather Service’s climate site in Indio, which holds records dating all the way back to 1894, the average monthly high temperature in April is 86 degrees — but heat waves can regularly bring highs over 100. Typically, only 0.07 inches of rain fall in Indio in April. The last time it rained on April 10 through April 12 in Indio was in 2020, the year that the festival was canceled due to COVID-19. 

“It’s not out of the question to get a little bit of rain out there in the desert in April, especially the first half of the month if we get, like, a late-season storm,” Roser said. “It’s not entirely out of the ordinary to see this.”

The weather pattern will affect Northern California first. Beginning as early as Thursday and lasting through the weekend in the Bay Area, forecasters said that “unsettled weather” could bring light to moderate rainfall and even afternoon thunderstorms. The most rain, up to 2 inches, will likely blanket the coastal mountains, according to meteorologist Roger Gass, who is based in San Francisco. The Sierra Nevada, which is experiencing a snow drought, could even get some welcome snowfall.

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Once the system reaches southwestern California, its biggest impacts will likely be in the mountains, where there is a 45% chance of an inch or more of precipitation, according to the weather service. The coast and the valleys have lower chances, only up to 15%, of the same levels. The system is least likely to affect the low desert areas, such as Indio.

Looking ahead into next week, temperatures will climb again on Monday, peak midweek at around 90 degrees and then potentially start to drop again for the following weekend during the second phase of the festival. 

“We’ll have to see what happens, but the pattern remains more active, cooler and breezier, so not looking very hot and dry,” Roser said. “It’s good conditions for the festival, but we’ll have to watch the winds.”

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