What it means
In most of America, patio season means summer. In Scottsdale it means everything but. From the first cool evening in October to the last tolerable one in May, the city’s restaurants move outside: string lights under pecan trees, fire pits on resort terraces, courtyard tables under mesquites, rooftops aimed at Camelback. A local who says “it’s finally patio weather” in late October is announcing the best eight months of the year.
The misters are the second half of the term. Scottsdale patios carry a line of fine nozzles along the shade structure that hiss on in the hot shoulder weeks, and the sensation of a cool fog on a 95-degree May evening is one of the city’s small marvels. In January the same patios swap the misters for propane heaters and blankets.
The site’s rooftop and sunset patio guide names the tables; the best-time-to-visit guide ranks the months. This page explains the season and the machinery.
Where you’ll meet it
On the twinkle-lit patio at Los Sombreros, on the lawn at El Chorro as Camelback goes copper, in the courtyard at the Canal Club with the misters on standby, and in every restaurant guide on this site that says “sit outside,” which is most of them.
Where the word came from
Nobody coined it; the climate did. The numbers from Sky Harbor explain the season better than any menu. Phoenix’s average high is 89 in October, 77 in November, 66 in December, 68 in January, 71 in February, 78 in March, 86 in April and 94 in May. Then the floor drops out: 104 in June, 106 in July, 105 in August, 100 in September. The Valley averages 111 days a year at 100 degrees or hotter, nearly all of them from the end of May through late September, and 21 days at 110 or more. Patio season is simply the eight months on the right side of that line.
The resort economy built its calendar on the same arc. Winter visitors have come to the Valley for the dry warmth since the health-seeker and dude-ranch days, the big events from the Barrett-Jackson auction in January to spring training in March all fall inside the window, and restaurants learned to sell the outdoors because the outdoors was what people came for.
The misters came from the swamp cooler. Evaporative cooling, which the Southwest adopted for houses in the early twentieth century, works because turning liquid water to vapor pulls heat out of the air, and it works best when the air is dry. A misting system is the same principle with pressure: pumps force water through nozzles fine enough to flash-evaporate, and in low humidity the surrounding air can cool by as much as 35 degrees in seconds. The desert gives it ideal conditions eight months of the year, and barely workable ones in the humid weeks of the monsoon. The swamp cooler entry covers the indoor cousin.
What it is not
It is not high season, though they overlap. High season is about prices and crowds, January through April; patio season is about weather and runs longer at both ends, into the cheap, pleasant shoulder weeks of October, November and May that the budget-minded prefer.
The fine print
The edges are where the judgment is. October can open at 100 degrees and close at 80; the first real patio nights usually arrive mid-month, after the first cold front. May averages 94 by day but the evenings are still dry and cool enough that a misted patio at 7:30 is pleasant, and it is the last month before the summer deals begin. Late September is a gamble: the monsoon humidity may linger, and misters do little when the air is already damp.
Midwinter is the other edge. December and January average lows of 45 degrees, and the record lows reach the teens and twenties, so patios roll out propane heaters, fire pits and stacks of blankets, and the best tables are the ones near a fire but not under a heater, which cooks one shoulder. Longtime residents treat 55 degrees as jacket weather and will tell you so.
Summer does not end outdoor eating; it moves it. After sunset, with the misters running and the temperature falling through the 90s, a late dinner outside is a genuine pleasure, and the resorts price for locals from Memorial Day to the first cool night; the summer resort playbook is the manual. The happy hour windows lengthen in the same months, and some of the best value in the city is a misted patio at 5 pm in July.
Two practical notes. Misters leave a film on sunglasses and phone screens and will frizz hair; ask for a table at the edge of the spray if that matters. And “misted patio” is a selling point in May and a warning in August: if a restaurant is advertising its misters in the humid weeks, the patio is a sauna with fog. Sit inside and come back in October.