Poor Brian’s Almanack: November 2026

November is the month New England puts things away. The boats come out of the water, the Auto Road is closed, the hoses get drained, and the woods fill up with people in orange. The clocks go back on the first morning, which moves sunset from 5:39 to 4:37 overnight, and the month takes another 59 minutes of daylight after that. By the 30th the sun is down at 4:13, within a couple of minutes of the earliest sunset of the year.

The Month at a Glance

Sun times are for Boston, from the U.S. Naval Observatory . Moon phases fall on the 1st (last quarter), 9th (new), 17th (first quarter), and 24th (full, at 9:53 am). Daylight saving time ends at 2 am on Sunday the 1st, and the clocks stay put until March.

The Forecast

Expect the first frost in Boston in the first week, if it hasn’t come already: the average date at Logan  is November 5. Expect the first flakes in the city around the end of the month, since the average first measurable snow at Logan  is November 29, on a day when nobody has their snow tires on yet. Expect one warm Saturday in the 60s that convinces everyone the raking can wait. Expect a coastal storm in the last ten days, and if it arrives during Thanksgiving week, expect the tide to be the story.

The Sky

The supermoon. November’s full moon, the Beaver Moon, is also the first supermoon since January , close enough to look about 6.5 percent bigger and 13.5 percent brighter than an average full moon. It’s exactly full at 9:53 am on Tuesday the 24th, so the nights to look are Monday and Tuesday. Tuesday is the better show: the moon rises at 3:57 pm, about twenty minutes before sunset, so it comes up over the harbor while there’s still light in the sky. Face east from anywhere with a view of the water. The Harborwalk in Charlestown and Castle Island both work.

The Leonids. The Leonids  peak on the night of the 17th into the 18th. The first-quarter moon sets at 11:42 pm, which leaves about six dark hours before dawn. This isn’t a storm year, so expect ten to fifteen meteors an hour from somewhere dark, and dress for a November night spent lying still.

The Water

Tides. The supermoon brings the biggest tides of the fall. From the 23rd to the 29th, every day’s highest tide in Boston Harbor runs above 10.8 feet, and on Wednesday the 25th and Thanksgiving morning the high reaches 11.8 feet: 10:57 am Wednesday and 11:49 am Thursday, according to NOAA’s Boston station . That’s about a foot and a half above an average high tide, and only half a foot short of the level where NOAA starts calling it minor flooding. It doesn’t take a nor’easter to cover that gap. A steady onshore wind will do it. On a calm morning it means water lapping at the top of the seawalls and puddles in the low spots along the Harborwalk. Add a nor’easter or a few days of east wind and it means water on Morrissey Boulevard, in the Seaport, and over Long Wharf.

The matching lows drop to about minus 1.4 feet, but they come after sunset. The best daylight lows are on Friday the 6th (2:57 pm) and Sunday the 22nd (3:01 pm, minus 0.2 feet). Both come about an hour and a quarter before sunset, so you’ll be walking back at dusk.

Water temperature. The Massachusetts Bay buoy  has started November at about 55°F in each of the last three years and ended it at about 50°F. That’s 7mm with a hood and gloves, or the month you start thinking about a drysuit.

Lobster. The recreational rules haven’t changed since October. Divers still take them by hand, with the measuring done before you surface , and none after dark. But the lobsters have mostly moved off the shallow ledges, and short days leave less light for diving. Most recreational divers are done by now.

Tautog. November’s fish is the tautog, or blackfish, which feeds hard on rocky bottom as the water cools. The state limits  allow five fish a day from October 15 to December 31, 16 inches minimum, and only one of the five can be 21 inches or longer. A private boat tops out at ten. The striped bass have mostly gone south.

The Islands

Scallops. Nantucket’s commercial bay scallop season opens November 1. Commercial scalloping isn’t allowed on weekends , and the 1st is a Sunday, so the fleet goes out Monday the 2nd. Last year, with the 1st on a Saturday, the boats went out on Monday the 3rd . The town also shuts commercial scalloping down on days colder than 28°F , to protect the seed scallops, so a cold snap means a day off. Family scallopers keep their season, with the same permit and weekly limit as October, but now they share the water with the people who do this for a living. This is when fresh Nantucket bay scallops start showing up at Boston fish counters.

The Stroll. Nantucket’s Christmas Stroll  is December 4 to 6 this year, the first weekend of December. It’s the island’s last big weekend before winter, and the ferries sell out. If you want to go, book in November.

The Woods

Deer season. Massachusetts archery season  runs through Saturday the 28th, and shotgun season opens Monday the 30th and runs to December 12. Shotgun hunters have to wear 500 square inches of blaze orange  on the chest, back, and head, and from the 30th on, anyone walking in the woods should wear orange too: a hat and a vest is enough. Massachusetts still bans hunting on Sundays , which makes Sunday the safest day on the trails. That may not last: a repeal passed the House in June and is sitting in a conference committee , so check before you count on it next fall.

North of the border. New Hampshire’s regular firearms season  opens Wednesday the 11th and runs to December 6, and Vermont’s rifle season  runs from Saturday the 14th to the 29th. This is the first year in decades that Vermont’s rifle hunters can take does as well as bucks, so expect more of them in the woods. Both are earlier than Massachusetts, which means that for most of the month the mountains are the place where orange matters. Neither state has a Sunday break. Wear orange on any trail in the White Mountains or the Greens, even the popular ones.

Ticks. Adult deer ticks don’t quit when it gets cold. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health says they’re out looking for a host any time the temperature is above freezing , and fall is their peak. A warm November afternoon is prime tick weather. Check after every walk until there’s snow on the ground.

The last color. The maples are done by the first week. What’s left is the oaks, which hold their leaves in copper and brown well into the month. That’s the reason to wait on the raking.

The Mountains

Mount Washington. November is when the summit becomes a winter mountain for good. By the Observatory’s 1991–2020 normals , it averages about 35.6 inches of snow in November and winds averaging 39.4 miles an hour for the whole month. The Auto Road ’s last day of the season is Sunday the 1st, weather permitting. Above treeline this month, plan for full winter conditions and a sunset before 4:30, and carry a headlamp even on a short day hike.

Skiing. Killington is aiming for November 11 , and the projections put Bretton Woods around the 14th and Sunday River around the 15th, but all of them open when it’s cold enough to make snow and not before. The first weeks are a few man-made trails, and real conditions don’t come until December. If you didn’t buy a pass, the early prices ended in early October .

The World Cup. Thanksgiving weekend, the women’s World Cup tour makes its first U.S. stop at the Stifel Killington Cup : a free festival on Friday the 27th, giant slalom on Saturday the 28th, and slalom on Sunday the 29th. Weekend tickets start at $10 a day.

In Town

Election Day. Tuesday the 3rd. Massachusetts elects a governor this year, along with the rest of the midterm ballot and whatever ballot questions make the final list. Polls are open 7 am to 8 pm , and some towns open earlier.

Veterans Day. Wednesday the 11th is a state holiday: state offices, banks, and the post office close, and most towns hold a ceremony at the war memorial at 11 am.

The Game. Fenway gets one more game this year. The 142nd Harvard–Yale game  is at Fenway Park on Saturday the 21st. It’s only the second time since 1894 that the game has been played somewhere other than Harvard Stadium or New Haven; the first was at Fenway in 2018. A kickoff time hasn’t been announced. Take the Green Line to Kenmore.

Plymouth. The same Saturday, America’s Hometown Thanksgiving Celebration  holds its parade through Plymouth, with extra ceremony this year for the country’s 250th. The commuter rail no longer stops in Plymouth itself, so take the Kingston Line from South Station and a short cab ride, or leave early and park well back from the waterfront.

The tree. Every year Nova Scotia sends Boston a Christmas tree, a thank-you for the help Boston sent after the Halifax Explosion in 1917. This year’s arrives on the Common  by police escort around 11 am on Tuesday the 24th. The lighting  is Thursday, December 3.

Thanksgiving. Thursday the 26th. If you’d like to earn the meal, the Feaster Five  in Andover puts thousands of runners on the road that morning and gives every finisher a pie. If you’d rather watch the water, the king tide peaks at 11:49 am, which leaves plenty of time to get home for dinner.

The Nutcracker. Boston Ballet’s Nutcracker  opens the day after Thanksgiving, Friday the 27th, at the Citizens Bank Opera House and runs through New Year’s Eve.

The Garden

Frost. If the first freeze hasn’t come by the end of the first week, it’s late. Anything still in the ground that minds the cold should come in now.

Garlic. UMass Extension  puts garlic planting as late as early November in southern New England, so the first week of the month is the last call. Plant cloves root side down, about three inches deep, and cover the bed with clean straw. The shoots will come up through it in spring.

Hoses. Disconnect them, drain them, and put them away before the first hard freeze. A hose left on the spigot holds water in the pipe, even on a frost-free faucet.

Leaves. The oaks drop last, so the leaves that come down after mid-month are mostly oak. Run them over with the mower and leave them on the lawn, or pile them on the garden beds. They’re better there than in a paper bag at the curb.

The Home

The humidifier. It comes out of the closet this month, and it should go back in clean. A humidifier that sits with old water in the tank grows bacteria and mold and then sprays them into the room, so the EPA’s advice  is to empty and rinse the tank every day, clean it every few days, and use distilled or demineralized water if your machine leaves a white dust on the furniture. Check the filter or wick before the first run. The one that sat damp in the box since March is the one to replace.

Outdoor faucets. Before the first hard freeze, close the indoor shutoff valve  for each outside faucet, then open the faucet outside so the water in the line can drain. If you can’t find a shutoff, an insulated cover is better than nothing. A burst pipe in January costs more than the ten minutes this takes.

Thanksgiving. It’s the worst day of the year for home cooking fires : about 1,446 in 2023, nearly five times the daily average, by the National Fire Protection Association’s count. The leading cause is cooking left unattended. Stay in the kitchen while anything is on the stovetop, and keep a lid nearby for a pan fire.

The walk. If you work from home, November is the month the after-work walk stops working: by 4:30 it’s dark. Move it to lunchtime. Twenty minutes outside at noon gets you the only real daylight of a November workday.

Poor Brian’s Almanack is a monthly almanac for coastal Massachusetts and the rest of New England.