Poor Brian’s Almanack: October 2026

October is the month New England stops being a summer place. The water is still warmer than the air most mornings, the mountains are already getting snow, and in between, a lot of things open in the same week: scallop season on Nantucket, archery season in the woods, and the cranberry bogs on the South Coast. The days lose an hour and twenty minutes over the course of the month, and then the clocks take another hour on November 1.

The Month at a Glance

Sun times are for Boston, from the U.S. Naval Observatory . Moon phases fall on the 3rd (last quarter), 10th (new), 18th (first quarter), and 26th (full, at 12:12 am). Daylight saving time ends Sunday, November 1, and that evening the sun sets at 4:37. Plan the last long afternoon accordingly.

The Forecast

Expect the first frost in the hills west of 495 early in the month, while Boston holds out until November. Expect one perfect Saturday, warm and still with the leaves at peak, scheduled for whatever weekend you’d already committed elsewhere. Expect a nor’easter sometime in the last ten days. If it shows up during the king tides at the end of the month, expect the Seaport to be on the news.

The Sky

The full moon lands just after midnight on the 26th, so the night to look is Sunday the 25th. It’s the Hunter’s Moon, the full moon after the Harvest Moon, named for the extra light it gave people tracking deer across cut fields. This year the name is accurate: archery season is three weeks old by then.

The Orionids , debris from Halley’s Comet, peak in the early hours of October 21 and 22. The moon is a fat waxing gibbous that week and is the main obstacle. On the morning of the 22nd it sets at 2:59 am, which leaves about three and a half dark hours before dawn. Expect fifteen to twenty meteors an hour from somewhere without streetlights. Expect four from Somerville.

The Water

Tides. The new and full moons pull the tides wide twice this month, but the full moon week is the big one. From October 25 to 30, every midday high in Boston Harbor runs above 10.7 feet, peaking at 11.6 feet at 1:08 pm on Wednesday the 28th, according to NOAA’s Boston station . That’s about a foot and a third above an average high tide, and about eight inches short of the level where NOAA starts calling it minor flooding. A calm day leaves you with wet stairs at Long Wharf. A nor’easter on the same afternoon puts water on Morrissey Boulevard.

The matching lows come in the evening, near or below minus one foot, mostly after dark. For daylight tidepooling, the best windows are the late afternoon lows on October 8 (4:10 pm) and October 24 (4:31 pm).

Water temperature. The Massachusetts Bay buoy  has started October at about 62°F in each of the last three years and ended it at about 56°F. The water holds its heat long after the air gives up, which is why October dives can feel warmer in than out. Bring a 7mm wetsuit, a hood, and something warm for the drive home.

Lobster. Recreational divers can still take lobster under a state permit: by hand only, no spears or snares, fifteen a day , and none after dark. In the Gulf of Maine area, which covers Cape Ann, the legal size  is 3¼ to 5 inches on the carapace, and you have to measure before you surface, not on the boat. As the water cools, lobsters move off the shallow ledges into deeper water. The easy summer bugs in ten feet of water get scarce this month.

Striped bass. The fall run is moving south. The big fish usually clear the Cape Cod Canal by mid-October , but schoolies hang on into November. The first On the Water report of the month  has bass from schoolies to over 40 inches spread across the Canal, Cape Cod Bay, and the backside beaches. The 81st Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby  runs through Saturday, October 17, with weigh-ins at the Edgartown dock from 8 to 10 in the morning and 7 to 9 at night.

The Islands

Scallops. Nantucket’s family scallop season  opens Thursday, October 1. Recreational scallopers need a town shellfish permit, can go out Wednesday through Sunday only, and are held to a bushel a week . Commercial boats wait until November, so for one month the harbor belongs to people in waders with a peck basket and an opinion about where the eelgrass is thick. Nantucket bay scallops are the sweet, small ones that end up on Boston menus at a price that makes more sense once you’ve spent an afternoon trying to fill a bushel yourself.

Cranberries. Massachusetts has more than 13,000 acres of bog , mostly in Plymouth County, on the Cape, and along the South Coast, and October is the middle of the wet harvest. The bogs get flooded, the berries are knocked loose and float to the surface, and the whole field turns a red that looks fake. For the best view, drive Route 58 through Carver on a weekday morning. On Nantucket, the Conservation Foundation runs harvest tours  at the 195-acre Milestone Bog.

Deer. Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket have some of the densest deer populations in the state , along with the ticks that come with them. Archery season covers the islands too. Check yourself after any walk through the moors.

The Woods

Deer season. The Massachusetts deer seasons  start in sequence. Youth Deer Hunt Day is Saturday, October 3. Archery opens statewide on Monday, October 5, and runs to November 28. Shotgun season is November 30 to December 12, and primitive firearms close out the year. October is the quiet part. Bowhunters sit still in tree stands and aren’t required to wear orange, so you’ll rarely see one. The exception is pheasant season, which opens Saturday, October 17. Bird hunters work the stocked wildlife management areas and wear orange hats, so if you walk a dog on one of those fields, you should both be in orange. Elsewhere, orange becomes the sensible choice for hikers when shotgun season opens after Thanksgiving.

Foliage. Color moves down the map from north to south and down the mountains from top to bottom. WBUR’s forecast  has the far north and the high peaks turning first, around now. Central New England and the Berkshires follow in early to mid-October, and Boston, the South Coast, and the Cape come last, in late October into November. The White Mountains on the holiday weekend, the 10th through the 12th, are spectacular and also bumper to bumper on the Kancamagus Highway. A Tuesday in the Berkshires two weeks later gets most of the color with almost none of the traffic.

Mushrooms. October is the peak for hen of the woods, or maitake, which grows in big gray-brown rosettes at the base of oaks, often from the same tree year after year. On a Boston Globe foraging walk through Lynn Woods  last October, the guide found one within the first few minutes. Hens are one of the safer finds for a beginner. Honey mushrooms, which come up in clusters on stumps and buried roots around the same time, are not: they share their stumps with the deadly galerina, which carries the same amatoxins as the death cap , and cooking doesn’t break them down. Also watch for the bright orange jack-o’-lantern, which grows in clusters on wood and gets mistaken for chanterelles and chicken of the woods. It won’t kill you, but it sends most people who eat it to the emergency room . If you’re new to this, go out with the Boston Mycological Club , founded in 1895, which claims to be the oldest amateur mushroom club in continuous existence. Its members run walks and will identify what you find. One more rule: state parks and forests are off limits. DCR doesn’t allow collecting mushrooms on its land, and a bill to allow personal-use foraging there has been filed session after session without passing . The legislature has also considered making the giant puffball the official state fungus . That hasn’t passed either.

The Mountains

Mount Washington. By the Mount Washington Observatory’s normals , October brings the summit about 19 inches of snow, and the first measurable snow usually comes in September. Recent years haven’t kept to that: the first measurable snow came October 8 in 2023, and the first inch didn’t arrive until October 20 last year . The Auto Road  is scheduled to run through November 1, weather permitting, and on that mountain “weather permitting” carries more weight than the calendar. If you’re hiking above treeline this month, plan for full winter conditions even when the trailhead is fifty degrees and sunny.

Skiing. Killington has no set opening date  and opens as soon as it’s cold enough to make snow. In the 1980s and ’90s that sometimes meant early October. In 1997 it opened a single trail on October 2 . Lately it’s been closer to the end of the month or into November. The first day is usually one ribbon of man-made snow down a brown mountain, and the lift line is full of people who’ve been waxing their skis since Labor Day. Consistent conditions don’t come until mid-November. October is for tuning gear and checking pass prices before they go up.

In Town

Salem. Haunted Happenings  opens tonight with the Grand Parade at 6:30 and runs through Halloween. Salem was founded in 1626, so this is its four hundredth October, and Halloween falls on a Saturday. Do the math on the crowds, then take the commuter rail from North Station. It’s about half an hour, and it beats an afternoon looking for parking on Derby Street.

Topsfield. The Topsfield Fair  runs October 2 to 12, its 208th year. Go for the giant pumpkin weigh-off, where the winners weigh as much as a small car. Stay for the fried dough.

Davis to Harvard. The HONK! Festival  puts activist street bands on corners across Somerville and Cambridge from October 9 to 11. On Sunday the 11th, the parade leaves Davis Square at noon and marches down Mass Ave into Harvard Square Oktoberfest . The rain date for both is Monday.

The 17th. This is the busiest Saturday of the year. The Head of the Charles  runs the 16th through the 18th. The best free seats are on the bridges, especially the Weeks Footbridge and the Eliot Bridge, where crews have to steer through the turns. Across the river in the Back Bay, the Boston Book Festival  fills Copley Square from 10 to 6, free. That same day the Derby ends on the Vineyard and pheasant season opens in the woods. Pick one.

TD Garden. The Bruins have been at it since September 29. The Celtics  open in Detroit on the afternoon of the 20th, and their home opener is Friday the 23rd against the Knicks, the defending champions.

Fenway. Dark. For the second year running, the Red Sox season ended in the Bronx : a two-game Wild Card sweep, outscored 18 to 2. Pitchers and catchers report in February.

The Garden

The average first frost at Logan  is November 5, according to National Weather Service records going back to 1872. The suburbs and the hills to the west get theirs weeks earlier. In the city, October is a long, slow finish. Inland, the season can end on any clear, still night, so bring in winter squash and the last green tomatoes before the forecast tells you to.

Garlic. UMass Extension  puts garlic planting in October in northern New England and early November in the south. Eastern Massachusetts falls in between, so the end of this month is about right. Garlic has to go in before winter because it needs the cold to form bulbs. Plant it at the end of October and you’ll dig it up next July.

Bulbs. Tulips and daffodils can go in as long as the ground is workable. Hold off on mulching them  until the ground freezes, or the mulch will attract the animals that dig them up. The squirrels will take your tulips anyway. They leave the daffodils alone, because daffodils are poisonous.

Cover crops. Beds you’re finished with can get winter rye, which UMass recommends seeding by mid-October . You can scatter it among plants that are still producing, so it gets established before the cold. It holds the soil through the winter and turns into organic matter when you work it in next spring.

The Home

October is a changeover month indoors too. Early in the month there are still afternoons warm enough for the AC, and by the end the heat is on most mornings. If you work from home, you notice both.

Heat. Before the first real cold snap, change the filter and run the heat for an hour on a mild day. The first run of the season burns off the dust that settled in the system over the summer, and it’s better to smell that on a day when you can open the windows. The Department of Energy suggests 68°F while you’re awake and lower while you sleep : turning it back 7 to 10 degrees for eight hours a day saves up to 10 percent on heating. Working from home rules out the daytime setback, so the savings have to come overnight. Schedule the drop for bedtime and the warm-up for half an hour before you start work. If you rent and the landlord pays for heat, Massachusetts has required it since September 15: 68°F from 7 am to 11 pm and 64°F overnight .

Floor heat. Radiant floor heat warms slowly, because it has to heat the tile before the tile heats you. Put it on a schedule: on before you wake up, off once you’re dressed. A small bathroom costs pennies an hour  to heat, but it adds up when the floor runs all day for a room you use for twenty minutes.

Humidity. The EPA recommends keeping indoor humidity between 30 and 50 percent  and always under 60. A $10 hygrometer  tells you where you are. October is usually the month the dehumidifier can retire: once the basement reading stays under 50, empty it, clean the bucket and filter, and put it away. The humidifier can wait until the heat runs every day and the air starts to feel dry. Then aim for the low end of the range, because the colder it gets outside, the more moisture ends up on the windows. If they’re wet on cold mornings, turn the humidifier down.

Ceiling fans. Flip them to clockwise on low . That pushes the warm air at the ceiling down along the walls without making a breeze.

Alarms. Use the clock change on November 1 to test the smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. Massachusetts requires a CO alarm on every level of the home . Smoke alarms older than ten years should be replaced, not just given new batteries, and CO alarms last five to seven.

Visitors. On warm October afternoons, stink bugs gather on the sunny side of the house looking for a gap to spend the winter in. They don’t bite, don’t damage anything, and don’t breed indoors . Just don’t crush them. Catch them in a cup and put them back outside, or flush them.

An audit. Mass Save  does free home energy assessments for owners and renters in buildings of one to four units. An auditor walks through the house, finds the drafts and the missing insulation, and points you to rebates. October, before the heating bills arrive, is the time to book one.

The desk. On November 1 the sun sets at 4:37. If your desk faces away from the window, this is the month to turn it around. The good light is gone by the end of the workday.

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