What to look for in nature in Missouri this November

For the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the fall high point for snow geese at Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge falls in the middle to latter part of November, and the refuge’s own visitor page calls October through December the best stretch for migrating waterfowl. It is the one place in Missouri where you can sit in a car on a cold morning and watch a hundred thousand birds lift at once. The refuge sits on the Missouri River floodplain under the loess hills in Holt County, about half an hour north of St. Joseph, and cars may use the 10-mile tour loop from 30 minutes before sunup until 30 minutes after sundown, on every day of the year including holidays. Indoors, the visitor center keeps Tuesday-to-Saturday hours, 10 to 3.

What the refuge does not promise is a particular number. The staff count birds most weeks in fall and post each survey as a short report, and the two late-November counts from 2025 show how quickly the mix can change in five days. Ducks outnumbered geese by a wide margin. Pintails dropped by two thirds between the two counts while snow geese more than tripled, and the trumpeter swans, which MDC describes as present in Missouri from late November to late March, were already there in the hundreds.

Snow goose numbers in the hundreds of thousands come in some autumns and not others; in 2025 the big flocks had not arrived by Thanksgiving week, which is why it pays to read the latest survey before you make the drive. Look for the blue morph mixed into the white flocks: MDC describes it as grayish brown with a white head and neck. Elsewhere, Mingo National Wildlife Refuge near Puxico says its waterfowl are usually most numerous in early to mid-December but can be present in large numbers from November on, and its auto tour normally runs through November, weather permitting. The interior of Swan Lake refuge near Sumner is closed to visitors from the end of October to early March, though the silo observation tower at headquarters stays open, with keys handed out during visitor center hours.

Two of the largest birds in North America start showing up this month, and both are still building at the end of it.

The middle of the month, on both counts. MDC’s field guide places the rutting peak in mid-November, and the November portion of firearms deer season runs Saturday, November 14, through Tuesday, November 24, 2026. Archery season pauses for those eleven days, closing November 13 and reopening November 25 through January 15.

Most of the color is gone by the second week, though MDC’s weekly fall color reports continue to about mid-November and the southeastern lowlands are the last to finish. What is left is subtler, and some of it only makes sense once the leaves are down.

With the leaves down, November is also the month to learn bark and silhouette: shagbark hickory’s peeling plates, the corky ridges of hackberry, sycamore’s white upper limbs along every creek.

On Friday, November 13. MDC’s rule is that catch-and-release fishing takes over at the four trout parks from the second Friday in November until the second Monday in February, and only flies are allowed. Maramec Spring Park near St. James is open daily from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Bennett Spring near Lebanon, Montauk near Salem and Roaring River near Cassville are open Friday through Monday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The fish are released, but you still need the right permit and tag, which MDC lists on its trout parks page.

The appeal of a November trout park is the light: low sun on spring-fed water that holds near the same cool temperature all year, mist rising on cold mornings, and the woods around Montauk and Roaring River down to bare branches.

The 2026–27 Project FeederWatch season begins November 1 and closes April 30. Counters pick a pair of back-to-back days, up to weekly, and log the highest count of each species in view together; there is a participation fee, and Cornell Lab and Birds Canada scientists use the counts.

MDC’s Virtual Nature Center has an online program on winter bird feeding on Friday, November 20, from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m., if you are setting up a feeder for the first time.

Almost everywhere, yes. In a median year, all but one of the eight stations below have already dropped to 32 °F before November begins: St. Joseph by October 17, Kirksville by October 19, Kansas City and Joplin by October 24, Cape Girardeau by October 25, Springfield by October 27 and Columbia by October 31. Their nine-in-ten dates, by which a freeze has come in nine years out of ten, fall between October 30 and November 14, so even a late year usually catches them by mid-month. The exception is the St. Louis station, downtown in the city’s heat, where the median is November 4 and one year in ten is still frost-free on November 21.

If your garden is somewhere between these stations, our Missouri frost date lookup covers hundreds of towns. In the city of St. Louis and along its river bottoms the last tender plants can hang on into November; elsewhere, the November job is mulching, cleaning tools and noting the date of the first night that freezes the birdbath solid.

Earlier than it seems possible, because two things happen at once. At 2 a.m. on Sunday, November 1, Missouri’s clocks drop back to 1 a.m., and that afternoon Kansas City’s sun goes down at 5:17 p.m. by the clock, where Saturday’s set at 6:18. Then the days keep shrinking: by November 30 the sun sets at 4:56 p.m. in Kansas City and Springfield and at 4:40 p.m. in St. Louis, and Missouri cities lose 49 to 55 minutes of daylight over the month, the most in the north. Kansas City and Springfield keep later sunsets than St. Louis because they sit farther west in the same time zone.

The commute home is now in twilight or dark for most of the state, which overlaps with the deer rut: a bad combination on rural two-lane roads. For your own street’s sunrise, sunset and twilight times, the daylight calculator works for any Missouri address.

November is the month the state’s climate splits north to south. NOAA’s 1991–2020 normals give St. Joseph only 1.9 inches of precipitation and Kansas City 2.0, while Cape Girardeau gets 4.3; Springfield and St. Louis are in between at about 3.4 to 3.6 inches. Normal highs fall to the mid-50s, from 53 °F at St. Joseph to 58 °F at Joplin, and normal lows sit just above or just below freezing, from 31 °F at St. Joseph to 37 °F at St. Louis and Joplin. The first snow of the season is possible but rarely amounts to much: the November normal is about an inch at Kansas City, 0.9 inch at St. Louis, 0.8 at Columbia and 0.6 at Springfield.

Behind all of that sits the Pacific. On September 10, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center rated the odds of this El Niño turning very strong at more than 90 percent during the fall and winter. Missouri is a borderland for El Niño. Writing for MU Extension in August, climatologist Zach Leasor noted that El Niño winters here have tended to be wetter, with the northern half more often running warm and the southern half sometimes running cool, and stressed that no two events behave alike. The last strong one, 2015–16, gave Missouri a wet, warm fall and then a winter close to average. We wrote this before NOAA’s official winter outlook, which comes out on October 15; look for it then among the CPC 90-day outlook maps; we will add what it says for Missouri. Day to day, our weather page carries the local forecast.

With new moon on November 9, the first half of November has moonless early evenings, and the long nights after the time change mean the sky is fully dark by about 6:30 p.m. All times below are Central Standard Time.

See the cloud forecast before a cold night outside; our Moon calendar gives local moonrise and moonset for your town.

1. Friday, November 6: Beginner Bird Walk at MDC’s Anita B. Gorman Conservation Discovery Center in Kansas City, 10:30 a.m. to noon; register through MDC’s events site.
2. Saturday, November 7: Birds and Brew at Mingo National Wildlife Refuge, 7 to 10 a.m. from the visitor center near Puxico, an MDC birding morning; registration required.
3. Saturday, November 7: Guided Bison Saunter at Prairie State Park near Mindenmines, 1 to 3 p.m. from the Regal Tallgrass Prairie Nature Center, on National Bison Day: about 2 miles on uneven ground, free, limited to 30 people. Call the park at 417-843-6711 to register.
4. Friday, November 13: Dark Sky Program at Thousand Hills State Park near Kirksville, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Point Shelter, with telescopes from park staff and Truman State University; free, no registration, weather permitting. The same evening Burr Oak Woods in Blue Springs runs a Friday the 13th night hike, 4:30 to 6 p.m., with registration.
5. Saturday, November 21: Trees and Trails in Swope Park, an MDC forest walk from 10 a.m. to noon run by Burr Oak Woods; Powder Valley Conservation Nature Center in Kirkwood has Nature Center Saturday programs on mammals and reptiles that morning and on November 28.
6. Tuesday, November 24: Night Hike for kids at Springfield Conservation Nature Center, 6:30 to 8 p.m.; the Beaver Moon will be all but full overhead. Registration required.
7. Friday, November 27, the day after Thanksgiving: Missouri state parks generally charge no entrance fee (camping, lodging and cave tours cost extra), so pick a trail and go. No special Black Friday programs were posted when we checked.
8. Citizen science: sign up for FeederWatch, whose counting season opens November 1; send short-eared owl, trumpeter swan or purple finch sightings to eBird; and read the weekly Loess Bluffs survey before you drive north.

We took these dates from MDC and state park calendars in early October; MDC events fill up and can change, so check the listing before you go. Looking ahead, Eagle Days at Loess Bluffs is December 5 and 6. Our Missouri October guide covers the fall color and the start of the goose migration.

• Hunting seasons this month (MDC, 2026–27): archery deer through November 13 and again November 25 to January 15; the November firearms deer portion November 14–24 and the late youth portion November 27–29; ducks in the North Zone all month (October 31 to December 29), in the Middle Zone from November 7, and in the South Zone November 26–29 before reopening December 7; youth waterfowl days November 21–22 in the South Zone; geese from November 11; furbearer trapping, coyote and bobcat included, from November 15. The managed deer hunt closes the Peck Ranch elk tour November 5–9.
• Blaze orange: during any firearms deer portion, MDC requires everyone hunting any game to wear orange on the head and on the upper body (a shirt, vest or coat), visible from every direction; camouflage orange does not count. Migratory-bird hunters and some archery hunters are exempt. The rule does not cover hikers, but anyone on public land from November 14 to 24 and November 27 to 29 should wear an orange cap and vest, and keep dogs in orange too.
• Deer and headlights: rutting bucks plus dark commutes put more deer in front of more headlights in the second half of the month. Slow down near wooded creek crossings, and when one deer crosses, assume a second is following.
• Cold water: lakes and rivers cool faster than the air. Falling out of a canoe or duck boat this month can disable a swimmer in minutes, so keep a life jacket buckled whenever you are afloat, and do not walk on early ice on farm ponds.
• Short days: pack a headlamp for every afternoon walk, and aim to reach the trailhead again before sunset, which comes before 5 p.m. in every Missouri city by the last week of the month.
• Dry leaves: fallen leaves and dry air let a grass or woods fire run quickly in November. Check for local burn bans before a campfire or a leaf burn, and never burn on a windy day.