What to look for in nature in Washington this November

In western Washington, November belongs to the chum. They make up the year’s final large run of salmon: broad, heavy fish whose spawning colors are olive with jagged purple and green bars, and the males grow hooked jaws and doglike teeth (an old nickname is dog salmon). Chum need only a short run of clean gravel near salt water, so they crowd into small creeks that a family can walk beside. After spawning they die, and the carcasses feed everything from eagles and gulls to the streamside alders.

Rain is the trigger. Chum wait in the bays until a storm lifts the creeks, then run up in a rush, so the clear day after a soaking is the time to go. Stay on the bank: the eggs are buried in the gravel, and one boot in the wrong place can crush a nest.

The flats where the Skagit and Stillaguamish rivers meet salt water are one of the great winter bird sights on the Pacific coast. White snow geese, which nest on Wrangel Island off Arctic Russia, graze the fields in flocks that lift off all at once with a sound like surf. Swans, both the trumpeter and the slightly smaller tundra, feed in the potato and corn stubble and roost on nearby lakes. Smaller crowds gather at refuges on the lower Columbia and near Spokane.

Snow goose hunting is open in the Skagit area (Goose Management Area 1) from October 17 through November 29, so expect shots on the private fields at dawn; the Fir Island reserve itself is closed to hunting. Count the swans in one field and log the number with the date; over several winters your own notes will show when they arrive and how many stay.

Washington has its own nesting bald eagles all year, but in winter many more arrive. WDFW explains that birds that nest in Canada and Alaska come south for the cold months and gather along rivers carrying spawned-out salmon, especially chum. The best-known gatherings are on the upper Skagit between Rockport and Marblemount and on the Nooksack near Deming in Whatcom County. Those are mostly December-to-February events: the Skagit River Bald Eagle Interpretive Center in Rockport opened for winter weekends on December 6 last season (its 2026–27 dates are not posted yet), and Whatcom County Parks names December through March as the big months at Deming Homestead Eagle Park.

November is the run-up. As the chum finish spawning and the carcasses wash onto gravel bars, the first eagles of the winter turn up in the cottonwoods, and the numbers build toward the holidays. Look for white heads in the bare trees along the rivers, and for eagles squabbling with ravens and gulls over a fish on the bar.

A feeding eagle that gets flushed may abandon a meal it needs, so watch from road pullouts and park trails, not the gravel bars. Gray, overcast mornings are often the busiest.

WDFW says deer breed during a rut that normally runs through November and December. Bucks that spent the summer quiet and hidden start to travel, rub their antlers on saplings, and follow does across roads in daylight. Whitetails in the northeast, mule deer east of the crest and blacktails on the west side are all on the move.

WDFW says more than half of the state’s deer-vehicle collisions happen in October and November. With sunrise and sunset now inside rush hour, ease off the gas in those twilight hours; a deer crossing the road is often followed by a second. A fresh rub or a scrape is a good find for the reading-the-signs page of the journal.

When the cold sets in, some mountain birds move downslope and some northern birds move south, so backyard feeders get busier. Here is what to look for and how to make your sightings count.

Keep feeders clean, and if bears still visit your neighborhood, wait until they have denned for the winter before putting seed out. List the new arrivals on the journal’s “birds I have seen” pages with the date each one first appears.

“King tide” is the popular name for the highest tides of the year, which in Washington come mostly from November through February, around new and full moons that coincide with a close moon. Washington Sea Grant publishes the dates for each winter so people can photograph how high the water reaches on seawalls, roads and marshes, a glimpse of everyday water levels in a future with higher seas. This year the November window falls over Thanksgiving week, and the Beaver Moon, full on the morning of the 24th, is also near perigee.

These are predicted astronomical tides. A storm with low pressure and an onshore wind can push the water higher, and the state climate office warns that strong El Niño winters lift coastal sea level for months at a time, which adds to the flood risk. Go at the peak, stay off the logs on the beach (a wave can roll one over a person), and do not drive through water over the road.

In most of Washington it has. Only two stations in the table below still have their median freeze date ahead of them on November 1. Yakima’s typical date is October 4, Pasco’s October 11, Spokane’s October 12 and Olympia’s October 14, and even the coast at Quillayute (October 26) and Bellingham (October 30) usually freeze before Halloween is over. The exceptions sit by big water and pavement. Vancouver, on the lower Columbia, has a median of November 9, and Sea-Tac Airport waits until November 23; in one year in ten, Sea-Tac does not reach 32 °F until December 15.

Near the Sound in Seattle or along the Columbia in Clark County, frost-tender pots may last into mid-November; east of the Cascades the season is done. Look up your closest station on the Washington frost dates page, and note the first morning you scrape ice off the windshield.

Very early, and suddenly. Pacific Standard Time is back as of 2 a.m. Sunday the 1st, which drops Seattle’s sunset that same afternoon to 4:51. By November 30 it sets at 4:20 and rises at 7:36. Spokane, near the Idaho line at the eastern edge of the Pacific time zone, gets the earliest evenings: its sun goes down at 4:00 p.m. on the last day of the month. Every city in the table loses more than an hour of daylight during November, and Bellingham ends the month with just 8 hours 35 minutes between sunrise and sunset.

Each day’s loss gets smaller as late November arrives. If you work indoors, plan your outdoor time around lunch. Any town’s sunrise and sunset are on the daylight calculator.

For Seattle, it is. NOAA’s 1991–2020 normals give Sea-Tac Airport 6.31 inches of precipitation in November, more than any other month, with a normal high of 52 °F and a low near 41 °F. The rain usually comes as a long series of Pacific storms, and the wettest of them are atmospheric rivers, narrow streams of tropical moisture that can stall over the Olympics and the Cascades for days. November 2006 brought Sea-Tac 15.63 inches, the wettest month on record there, and Mount Rainier National Park took 18 inches of rain in 36 hours on November 6 and 7 that year, wrecking roads and campgrounds. In November 2021, a five-day atmospheric river that began on the 12th sent the Nooksack and Skagit to record floods, and the Department of Ecology says the water damaged about 85 percent of the homes and buildings in Sumas.

East of the mountains, November is when winter starts. Spokane’s normals are 2.06 inches of precipitation, 6.2 inches of snow, and a high of only 42 °F; Yakima gets less than an inch of precipitation and about 3 inches of snow.

This winter looks to be shaped by El Niño. The CPC’s mid-September discussion (dated the 10th) puts the odds that El Niño becomes very strong over the coming cold season above nine in ten. The Office of the Washington State Climatologist, looking back at the strongest El Niño winters since 1950, finds that they have reliably run warm in Washington, and that lower-than-normal mountain snowpack is the usual result. Precipitation is less dependable: the average leans a little dry, but some of the strongest events, 1957–58, 1982–83 and 2015–16 among them, were wet. The office also reminds readers that El Niño accounts for only a part of the year-to-year swing and that every event behaves a little differently.

NOAA releases its winter outlook in mid-October (the 15th this year); after that date you can read its temperature and precipitation maps at the CPC 90-day outlooks. For this week’s rain, wind and snow levels, see our forecast page.

With sunset before 5 p.m., you can stargaze before dinner, if the clouds allow. They often will not on the west side, so the Columbia Basin and the Palouse have the best odds of a clear night. All times are Pacific Standard Time.

Solar activity has passed its maximum, yet large solar storms still happen, and long November nights give northern Washington a fair chance at an aurora if one comes. Check what the sky is doing before heading out, and find moonrise for your town on our moon calendar.

1. Weekends from October 31: Kennedy Creek. Free, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with docents on the trail; the run usually peaks around mid-month. Leave dogs at home.
2. Saturday, November 7: Kitsap Salmon Tours. Eight free salmon-stream sites from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., with coloring stations and guided walks.
3. Wednesday, November 11: a Discover Pass free day. Veterans Day is the year’s last free day for parking at state parks and on WDFW and DNR lands. (The day after Thanksgiving is not a free day in Washington, though Kennedy Creek is open that Friday.)
4. Saturdays at Nisqually. The Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge lists a volunteer-led nature walk every Saturday at 10 a.m., about two hours and a mile, starting at the observation deck by the visitor center; on the fourth Saturday, November 28, a longer bird walk starts at 9 a.m. Confirm on the refuge’s events page before you drive.
5. Weekends at Piper’s Creek. Look for chum in Seattle’s Carkeek Park; check with Seattle Public Utilities for the date of this year’s Salmon Celebration.
6. Tuesday, November 17 to Wednesday the 18th: Leonids before school. Set an alarm for 5 a.m., go out on the porch for ten minutes, and count.
7. Friday, November 27: the king tide. Seattle’s highest water is about 7:39 a.m., and Tacoma’s is at the same time. Take a photo of a familiar seawall or boat ramp and compare it with a summer picture.
8. Citizen science. Sign up for FeederWatch (its season opens November 1), count swans and geese for eBird, and add salmon, eagles and king tide photos to iNaturalist or Washington Sea Grant’s king tide project.

The nature pages for every state cover Oregon and Idaho too, and if you missed the salmon in October, the Washington October guide is still up. A field journal of your own keeps the dates in one place.

• Hunting seasons and hunter orange. Western Washington’s modern firearm elk season runs November 7–18, and the eastern firearm elk season that opened October 31 continues through November 8. Late modern firearm deer seasons are November 7–19 for white-tailed bucks in the northeast (units 105–124) and November 19–22 for black-tailed deer in many western units; late archery and muzzleloader seasons open in many units between November 20 and 25 and run into December. Duck season is open all month, Skagit-area snow goose hunting runs through November 29, and pheasant, quail and grouse are open, with western Washington pheasant ending November 30. Under state rule WAC 220-414-080, anyone after upland birds or rabbits with a shotgun or rifle (muzzleloaders excepted), deer and elk hunters with modern firearms, and nearly anyone hunting where a modern firearm deer or elk season is open have to wear a minimum of 400 square inches of fluorescent orange or pink, alone or mixed, as an outer layer above the belt, not covered by a pack and visible from front, back and sides. Hikers have no such rule, but it is sensible to dress the same way in the woods this month.
• Floods and landslides. Atmospheric rivers can raise rivers in hours. Stay off riverbanks in high water, and watch for slides on steep, soaked slopes; windstorms on wet ground also topple big trees, so keep a flashlight handy.
• Mountain passes. The North Cascades Highway (SR 20) closes for the winter when the snow comes; WSDOT’s records show final closures from November 3 (2022) to December 11 (2019) over the last ten years. Chinook and Cayuse passes near Mount Rainier usually close between late October and late November. Carry chains, and check WSDOT before you cross Snoqualmie or Stevens Pass.
• Short days and cold rain. Start hikes early so you are out by 4 p.m., carry a headlamp, and pack a dry layer. Wet cotton at 40 °F can bring on hypothermia.
• Dogs and salmon. Raw salmon can carry a parasite-borne infection that is often fatal to dogs. Keep them on a leash and away from carcasses on the creek banks.