San Francisco · Month comparison
March vs October
October ranks #1 overall vs March at #5. Warmest weather, two great free festivals, Fleet Week air show — October is the answer.
March
#5 of 12 months
Strong option
Rain tailing off, crowds still absent — the first genuinely pleasant month of the year.
- ↑March marks the start of the dry-season transition. Rainfall drops to 72mm (roughly half of January's volume) and the frequency of sunny spells increases noticeably. The hills are still brilliantly green from winter rain, creating an unusually lush backdrop against the city's famous painted houses and bay views — a combination that disappears by May as the grass dries to California gold.
- ↑Crowds remain low and prices affordable: Alcatraz Night Tours are bookable with a week's notice, the Ferry Building Saturday market is attended by locals not tour groups, and the queue at Tartine Bakery — perennially one of the city's most discussed food destinations — is half the length it will be in summer.
October
#1 of 12 months
Best match
Warmest weather, two great free festivals, Fleet Week air show — October is the answer.
- ↑October brings Fleet Week (typically the second weekend), when the US Navy's Blue Angels fly formation demonstrations over the bay that are visible from virtually every north-facing vantage point in the city. The show is free to watch from Crissy Field, Fort Mason, Marina Green, and dozens of rooftops and hills. It's one of the few genuinely world-class free spectacles available in any major city — an F/A-18 in full afterburner over the Golden Gate Bridge is difficult to forget.
- ↑Hardly Strictly Bluegrass (first weekend of October, Golden Gate Park) is the other great October event — a free, three-day, multi-stage music festival that draws 750,000 people over the weekend. The late Warren Hellman's gift to the city is fully funded in perpetuity: no ticket required, no commercial sponsorship wall, just an extraordinary lineup (Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Hazel Miller) spread across six stages in the park. It remains one of the world's great music events that most people outside the Bay Area have never heard of.
| Factor | March | October |
|---|---|---|
| Weather score | 6 | 9 |
| Value score | 7 | 6 |
| Crowd score | 8 | 6 |
| Events score | 5 | 9 |
| Atmosphere | 7 | 9 |
| Avg high temp | 15.1°C | 20.3°C |
| Monthly rain | 72mm | 28mm |
| Daily sunshine | 6.5hrs | 7.8hrs |
March trade-offs
- ↓March is still a transitional month — week-long stretches of clear weather can be interrupted by late-season storms, and the microclimate variability between neighbourhoods means dressing for two weather systems in a single day remains necessary.
- ↓Evening temperatures drop to 9°C and below, making outdoor dining on the many patios and terraces uncomfortable without a coat. The city's indoor dining culture handles this well, but it's a real constraint on the alfresco experience.
October trade-offs
- ↓Fleet Week weekend causes a significant accommodation spike in the Marina and North Beach areas — waterfront-adjacent hotels during that specific weekend book out fast and charge premium rates. Planning around or far from the waterfront mitigates this.
- ↓October is increasingly busy as word of SF's "second summer" spreads. The off-peak window is smaller than it used to be — tourists who have read that September-October is the best time mean it's no longer a secret.
Scores compare months within San Francisco. Climate data: Open Meteo ERA5 30-year normals (1991–2020). Methodology →