What to look for in nature in Kentucky this November

Cumberland Falls, where the Cumberland River spills over a broad sandstone ledge southwest of Corbin, is the place in Kentucky to see a rainbow made by moonlight. The bow appears in the mist downstream of the falls on clear nights when the moon is near full and has risen high enough to shine into the gorge. Each November the timing slides a little earlier in the evening than in summer, because the long nights let the full moon climb over the trees soon after dark.

This year the November run falls over Thanksgiving week and lines up with the Beaver Moon, which is full at 9:53 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, November 24. That moon comes about 30 hours before its closest point to Earth for the month, so it counts as a supermoon on the lists EarthSky uses, though only a modest one. The park’s posted windows are below; they are keyed to the evening you arrive, and the park calls every time approximate.

November evenings at the falls are cold and damp; the normal low at the London-Corbin airport, the nearest long-running station, is about 35 °F, and the spray makes it feel colder. Dress for an hour of standing still, bring a headlamp for the walk to the overlooks, and look at our cloud-cover map before you leave home, since thin high cloud can wash the bow out even when the moon shows. A camera on a tripod with a few seconds of exposure picks up the colors the eye misses.

Kentucky’s waterfowl season on the ground starts in November. Every week from mid-November into February, state wildlife biologists post counts from its wildlife management areas, with notes on water levels and weather. Read in order, they show the birds arriving: a few hundred wood ducks and gadwall early in the month, then a surge after each strong front, with the biggest numbers in the bottomland fields of Ballard County near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.

The counts below come straight from those reports. They are not a forecast for 2026, since water, crops and weather change every year, but they show how fast the flocks can build and where to point your binoculars.

Bald eagles follow the ducks, and the same reports ask hunters to bag and bin the remains of cleaned birds, because eagles and other raptors are especially vulnerable to the avian influenza that has turned up in Kentucky in recent winters. If you find a sick or dead wild bird, leave it alone and tell the department.

By November the summer birds have gone and the winter community has moved in. The changes are easiest to see at a feeder and along a brushy fencerow, but the most striking bird of the month is the one already living here: the bald eagle, back from near-extinction as a Kentucky nester and busy at its nest long before the eggs.

November belongs to the white-tailed deer. Bucks that spent October rubbing saplings and pawing scrapes now travel widely by day and night in search of does, and the department times the modern gun season to fall in the middle of it: in announcing an earlier season it noted that pre-rut, peak rut and post-rut all fit inside the 16 days. This year the season runs November 14 to 29. With more than 130,000 deer taken in a typical year Kentucky’s herd is large and widespread.

By early November the maples of the eastern ridges have mostly dropped, but the season is not over. The Knobs south of Louisville and the bottomland forests of the west hold color into the month, and the oaks go last, in deep reds and leathery browns. Bernheim Forest’s ColorFest, on November 7 and 8, has long been timed to that late show near Louisville.

Over most of the state, yes. NOAA’s 1991–2020 normals put the median first 32 °F night before Halloween at nearly every station: Oct 16 in the cold valley at West Liberty, Oct 23 at Ashland, Oct 25 both at London and at the Northern Kentucky airport, Oct 28 for Paducah and Lexington alike, and Oct 31 at Bowling Green. Two stations in the table usually start November still waiting. The ridgetop airport at Jackson, where cold air drains away downhill, has a median of Nov 1, and Louisville, warmed by the city and the Ohio River, holds out to Nov 7.

A mild fall can push that wait well into the month. Read across to the last column: in one year in ten Louisville still has not frozen by Nov 23, and Bowling Green and Jackson can go to mid-November. By Thanksgiving, though, almost every garden in Kentucky has had its killing frost.

Find your nearest station on our Kentucky frost dates page. Once the first hard freeze comes, it is time to drain hoses, pull the last peppers and mulch the perennials; note the date, since next year’s will differ by days or weeks.

Close to fifty minutes, and it feels like far more, because the clocks change on the first morning of the month. Daylight saving time ends at 2 a.m. on Sunday, November 1; by Sunday evening, sunset arrives a full hour earlier on the clock than on Saturday. Between November 1 and 30, Paducah and Bowling Green each give up 48 minutes of daylight, Lexington 50, Louisville 51, and Covington and Ashland, in the north and northeast, 52.

The loss slows as the month goes on and the solstice approaches, but the evenings keep darkening. The earliest sunsets of the year come in early December, before the shortest day, a quirk of Earth’s tilted, elliptical orbit.

For sunrise, sunset and twilight times at your own address, try our daylight calculator, and plan afternoon hikes so you are back at the car with light to spare.

November is the month Kentucky’s weather turns. By NOAA’s 1991–2020 normals, average highs fall to between 53.8 °F at the Northern Kentucky airport and 59.2 °F at Bowling Green, and average lows sit between 35.1 °F at the Northern Kentucky airport and 39.4 °F at Louisville. Precipitation runs from 3.23 inches in Northern Kentucky to 4.09 at Paducah, with Lexington at 3.37 and Louisville at 3.42. Snow is still a rarity: normal November totals are a tenth of an inch at Bowling Green, 0.3 at Louisville and 0.8 in Northern Kentucky.

This winter brings an unusual backdrop: a Pacific warm event that federal forecasters, in their September 10 discussion, judged more than 90 percent likely to grow very strong by winter. NOAA’s climate.gov links El Niño with drier conditions in the Ohio Valley, and the National Weather Service in Louisville finds that strong events favor near-normal temperatures over most of Kentucky and raise the risk of very dry weather, especially from January through March. For a naturalist, a dry winter would show in low creeks and shallow wetlands; this fall’s waterfowl reports already describe managers pumping wells to hold water in some wildlife areas.

October 15 is the day NOAA puts out its official winter outlook, and Kentuckians can read those maps among the CPC seasonal outlooks; for the week ahead in your county, see our weather page.

The first flakes usually fly in November, but the first snow you can measure takes longer, and the gap between the two is wider than most people guess. The National Weather Service office in Louisville keeps the averages for its main climate sites. A trace, flakes in the air or a dusting too thin to measure, typically arrives first at Lexington, on November 13, and at Louisville around November 15; Bowling Green waits until November 29.

A tenth of an inch on the ground, the weather service’s measurable snow, comes on average by November 29 at Lexington, December 7 at Louisville and December 24 at Bowling Green. The first inch is a December event in the Bluegrass and Louisville and usually waits until January 2 at Bowling Green. In the mountains it comes sooner: the weather service office in Jackson puts the average first measurable snow there on November 28, and the earliest on its 1981–2015 list fell on October 20, 1989.

Volunteers with CoCoRaHS, a national network of backyard weather observers, measure snow with a white board and a ruler, and new observers can sign up before winter. Write down the first flakes and the first measurable snow on your daily field log; the two dates make a good pair to compare year to year.

Check moonrise and moonset for your own town on our moon phase calendar before planning a Leonid watch or a moonbow trip. The Golden Pond Planetarium at Land Between the Lakes and Bernheim’s night programs are the easiest places to look through a telescope with a guide.

1. Sunday, November 1: FeederWatch starts. Hang a feeder where children can see it from a window and count on two days in a row. That afternoon Bernheim’s volunteer naturalists lead their First Sunday Nature Hike at 2 p.m.
2. November 7 and 8: ColorFest at Bernheim. The 30th and final one, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. both days, $30 a carload. That evening at 7, Bernheim hosts a talk on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
3. Saturday, November 14: a dark-sky night hike. Bernheim’s Ashlock Hollow Forest Road hike, 7:30 to 11 p.m., is a 1-mile walk on a gravel road to a remote prairie with a telescope; $15 for members, $20 for others, register by 4 p.m. the day before at (502) 215-7155. The same morning, Barren River Lake State Resort Park’s free monthly Second Saturday hike leaves the lodge at 10 a.m. Central; the park lists it for the second Saturday of every month, so check with the park before you go.
4. Thursday, November 19: Cubs Club at Barren River. The park’s free monthly program for children 13 and under, with an adult, meets on the third Thursday of each month, through December 17 on the park’s listing, with a small adventure, craft or story; check with the park before you go.
5. Saturday, November 21: trees by day, owls by night at Carter Caves. Jr. Naturalist Day: All About Trees, for ages 6 to 13, starts at 10 a.m. in the Lewis Caveland Lodge lobby; $15 a child, bring a packed lunch, and register at (606) 286-7009. At 6 p.m. the free Owl Prowl begins in the same lobby with a live owl, a craft or a $5 owl pellet dissection, and a guided walk on Mulligan Trail listening for calls. At Bernheim that day, Birding for Beginners runs 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. and ECO Kids Discovery Day starts at 1 p.m.
6. November 22 to 26: the moonbow. See the schedule above. The early windows on the 22nd and 23rd suit younger children.
7. Tuesday, November 24: a full-moon hike. Bernheim’s night walk around Lake Nevin runs 5:30 to 8 p.m.; $15 for members, $20 for others, registration required.
8. Saturday, November 28: a wreath from the woods. Bernheim’s Winter Wreath Workshop at 1 p.m. uses foraged material on a grapevine base; $35 for members, $40 for others.

Programs sometimes change or fill, so call ahead. To keep a record of the month, give each child a page from the Naturalist’s Field Journal, and browse the rest of the season on our nature by month pages.

• Gun season and hunter orange. Modern gun deer season runs November 14 to 29, and deer archery and crossbow seasons continue all month. Fall turkey crossbow season opens November 14, the antlerless elk firearms season opens November 28, a youth-only waterfowl day falls on November 21, and duck season opens on Thanksgiving for four days, November 26 to 29, with goose seasons opening the same day. Grouse, and rabbit and quail in the eastern zone, open November 1, close on the 14th and 15th for the gun opener, and reopen on the 16th, the day the western-zone rabbit and quail seasons begin. During the modern gun, muzzleloader and youth firearm deer seasons, and whenever a firearm elk or bear season is open, state rules require every hunter and every companion to show solid hunter orange on the head, back and chest, visible from every side, during daylight hours; archers hunting during those seasons must wear it too, and waterfowl and dove hunters are exempt. Hikers are not required to wear orange, but on public land from mid-November a bright hat and vest are wise, and dogs should wear orange as well.
• Short days. Sunset comes an hour earlier by the clock after November 1, so a mid-afternoon start can mean finishing on the trail by flashlight. Pack a headlamp and an extra layer even when the day feels mild.
• Cold water. Lakes and rivers cool quickly now, and a fall from a kayak or duck boat into 50 °F water is dangerous within minutes. Wear a life jacket and tell someone your plan.
• Burning. Kentucky’s fall forest fire hazard season lasts until December 15. Until then, no open burning within 150 feet of woods or brush between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.; dry leaves and wind can turn a brush pile into a wildfire.
• Deer on the roads. Mid-November brings the most deer onto the pavement. Ease off on wooded roads in the half-light, use high beams when no one is coming, and brake rather than swerve.
• Ticks. Adult blacklegged ticks stay active on any day warmer than about 40 °F. Check for them after a walk in brushy woods, even in late November.