The Season Ahead
November 2026
Your first freeze, an hour or more of daylight gone across the North, a modest supermoon on the 24th, and the month the cranes, swans and eagles come south. Here is what to look for, from the field tools on the site.
Seasons · Frost dates
When your first freeze usually comes
The palest blues are November. Washington, New York and Atlanta usually see their first 32°F night between November 18 and 20, and Dallas around the 24th. Most of the North is already past it: Denver's usually comes around October 8, Chicago's around the 28th.
The morning after yours, look at what changed: the last leaves let go, and the grass goes white at the edges. Write the date down, and next year you'll have something to compare it to.
Seasons · Field almanac
How much daylight you get in November
The map shows daylight on the 15th, sunrise to sunset: 10h 53m in Miami, 9h 18m in Seattle, and just 7h 15m in Anchorage. Over the whole month Seattle loses 73 minutes and Miami 30. Anchorage loses 2 hours 20 minutes. By the 30th the sun sets at 4:20 in Seattle and 4:29 in New York, and the earliest sunsets of the year come in early December, a couple of weeks before the solstice.
Sky · Tonight's moon and planets
The sky in November
| Nov 1 | Clocks fall back an hour at 2 a.m. Evening sky watching now starts before dinner. |
| All month | Venus is the morning star in the east, near its brightest of the year. |
| Nov 12 | Northern Taurids: a few slow meteors an hour, with the odd fireball. |
| Nov 15 and 16 | Mars and Jupiter sit 1.2 degrees apart high in the south before dawn, one binocular view, with Venus blazing below. |
| Nov 17 to 18 | Leonids: about 15 very fast meteors an hour before dawn, once the half-lit moon sets around 12:30 a.m. |
| Nov 18 | The sun sets in Utqiagvik, Alaska, and stays down until January 23. |
| Nov 24 | Beaver Moon, full at 8:53 a.m. Central: a modest supermoon and the second-closest full moon of 2026. Round moonrises on the evenings of the 23rd and 24th. |
No eclipses this month. The next is an annular eclipse of the sun on February 6, seen from South America.
 | FROM THE PRESS Track the moon with The Moon Journal. A field guide to the phases with thirteen lunar-cycle trackers, one for each full moon of the year. |
Clouds · Cloud identifier
Four clouds that tell you what's coming
November's storms announce themselves. Thin cirrus comes first, then the sun dims behind a sheet of altostratus, then the low gray of nimbostratus settles in. Watch that sequence and you can usually call rain or snow a day ahead. When small cumulus pop up in a hard blue sky behind it, cold, dry air has arrived, and the night will be clear and cold.
Near mountains, watch for lenticulars: smooth, lens-shaped clouds that hang still downwind of ridges when strong winds blow aloft.
 | FROM THE PRESS Read the sky with The Cloud Journal. Name the ten cloud types and test your own forecasts. New: a one-month edition, a sky a day for 31 days. |
Seasons · Nature this month
Where to go in November
 | Bald eagles at Haines, Alaska Late chum salmon in open water feed one of the biggest gatherings of bald eagles anywhere. The Alaska Bald Eagle Festival is November 6 to 8. |
 | Snow geese and swans on the Skagit flats Snow geese from Russia's Wrangel Island and thousands of trumpeter and tundra swans winter on the farmland around Fir Island and Conway. |
 | Cranes, then monarchs, in California Lodi's Sandhill Crane Festival runs November 6 to 8. Pacific Grove expects its monarch peak around the end of the month. |
 | Tundra swans at Bear River, Utah They arrive around November 1 and peak the week before Thanksgiving. Drive the auto tour on a calm morning. |
 | Geese and cranes at Bosque del Apache Mid-November starts the peak season. Be at a pond's edge before sunrise, when thousands of snow geese lift off at once. |
 | Whooping cranes over Texas They cross the state this month, often over Dallas and Fort Worth, Waco and Austin. All white with black wingtips: if you see one, report it. |
 | Swans on the Upper Mississippi 10,000 to 45,000 tundra swans can crowd the pools, usually on the second or third weekend. Try the Shady Maple overlook south of La Crosse. |
 | Crane fly-ins at Jasper-Pulaski, Indiana The year's biggest counts have landed between November 22 and December 3 in each of the last four falls. Arrive well before sunset. |
 | Moonbow nights at Cumberland Falls Five moonbow nights, the 22nd through Thanksgiving, with the full moon on the 24th. |
 | Manatees at Apollo Beach, Florida When a front chills the bays, manatees gather by the hundreds at warm outflows. Tampa Electric's free viewing center reopens November 1. |
Photos: USFWSAlaska, public domain; Brent M. from Sedro-Woolley, usa, CC BY 2.0; Pacific Southwest Region USFWS from Sacramento, US, public domain; USFWS Mountain Prairie, public domain; Larry Lamsa, CC BY 2.0; U.S. Department of Agriculture, public domain; USFWS/Southeast, public domain; Serge Melki from Indianapolis, USA, CC BY 2.0; Don Sniegowski, CC BY 3.0; Bkamprath, public domain.
Every state has ten more, with dates and places, on its November page.
 | FROM THE PRESS Keep track of autumn with The Naturalist's Field Journal. Fifty-three hand-drawn plates and pages to record what you find, season by season. |
Free printables
Free this month
 Your state's November checklist. Ten things to look for, all fifty states. |  2027 Full Moon Calendar. Every full moon, its name and date. |
Forecast
Amphibian Outlook
The winter ahead, region by region: the odds of a warmer or colder, wetter or drier season, set beside NOAA's and scored in public. One issue a month, $5.
Clear skies,
Amphibian Publishing
The Season Ahead
One short email the day before each month starts: the clouds to watch for in the month ahead and what they tell you, the full moon and the meteor showers worth staying up for, and one thing to look for outside. Free, no spam, and you can unsubscribe anytime.