Weather in San Diego in November

Prime time. November is about as good as San Diego gets. Highs average 23.9 °C, lows 14.2 °C, and rain falls on 4 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

November ranks 5 of 12 in San Diego: past the worst of the year but short of May, which is the month to book if the dates are open.

Rain falls on only 4 days, so an itinerary with no wet-weather fallback is a reasonable risk. Nothing specialised needed — this is the month you pack for the trip rather than for the weather.

What the averages hide

The averages here are honest — no hidden extremes worth planning around. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest November day reached 34 °C and the coldest night fell to 5 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 36 mm — roughly 144% of the month's rain in one day.

This is the volatile part. November rainfall has ranged from 1 mm to 98 mm across the twenty years measured — a 97 mm spread around an average of 25 mm. The average is real but almost no individual November looks like it, so treat the figure as the middle of a wide range rather than a forecast.

Wind is light at 7.9 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 60%.

How November sits in the year

The month is on the way down: 4 °C cooler than October, with December dropping another 4 °C. The first week and the last are not the same trip.

Daylight in November

November sits at the dark end of San Diego's year — 10.5 hours of daylight against 14.3 at midsummer, losing 0.7 hours across the month. Sightseeing days are genuinely shorter, and an itinerary built for summer will not fit.

Sea temperature

The sea sits at about 18.1 °C in November — swimmable, but it takes a moment to commit. The sea peaks at 20.3 °C in September and bottoms out at 15.3 °C — water lags the air by a month or two, which is why the best swimming often comes after the best weather.

How busy it gets

Busy. Popular without being frantic; book the things you care about, improvise the rest.

Crowd levels are estimated from climate desirability and school-holiday calendars, not from visitor numbers.

November in San Diego versus nearby

If San Diego is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Irvine is close enough to be a coin toss — 3.7 °C cooler, 1 day less rain. Riverside is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, the same number of rain days.

So: November is effectively as good as it gets here — 6 points behind May, which is inside the margin where the weather stops being the deciding factor and price starts being it.

Every month in San Diego

See all twelve months in San Diego, or where else to go in November.