Meet Carl, our Guest Speaker at our General Meeting a week from tomorrow, December 8th, at New St. Mary's Cathedral/the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption at 1100 Gough Street.
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Autumn General Meeting with Carl Nolte Guest Speaker
By Carl Nolte, Contributor Nov 29, 2025 - San Francisco Chronicle
Is it still November? Some of us will be glad when it’s over. It is our least favorite month.
November is a month that doesn’t know what to make of itself — a month that still has a touch of autumn mixed in with a taste of the winter rains. Think of what happened this November in San Francisco. It was 76 degrees on Nov. 10, followed by a rainstorm a couple of days later. Stinson Beach on Monday, an atmospheric river on Friday. November hadn’t made up its mind.
The World Series ended on the first day of November. The next day we switched to standard time. It was nearly dark by 5 in the afternoon. Everyone hates the time change, but nobody does anything about it. That’s November for you.
People tend to evaluate things when the shadows start to grow long. One thing seems to be sure this November: San Francisco is back. Everybody noticed the change this month, especially my panel of experts: the man on the Muni streetcar, a woman who drives across the city to work every day, a bartender. I looked around, too.
Looking back on November: Indecisive weather, time change and a monthlong Black Friday
Greg
Quick and Dirty
Is it still November? Some of us will be glad when it’s over. It is our least favorite month.
November is a month that doesn’t know what to make of itself — a month that still has a touch of autumn mixed in with a taste of the winter rains. Think of what happened this November in San Francisco. It was 76 degrees on Nov. 10, followed by a rainstorm a couple of days later. Stinson Beach on Monday, an atmospheric river on Friday. November hadn’t made up its mind.
The World Series ended on the first day of November. The next day we switched to standard time. It was nearly dark by 5 in the afternoon. Everyone hates the time change, but nobody does anything about it. That’s November for you.
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People tend to evaluate things when the shadows start to grow long. One thing seems to be sure this November: San Francisco is back. Everybody noticed the change this month, especially my panel of experts: the man on the Muni streetcar, a woman who drives across the city to work every day, a bartender. I looked around, too.
There is much more traffic, some of it as bad as the good old days five years ago. You can’t find a seat on the bus at rush hour, and there are tourists waiting for the cable car at Powell and Market once again. There is even a renaissance of panhandlers downtown.
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There are more Waymo driverless cars and they run in packs, like wolves. Turning a corner one day I saw a Zoox, a kind of robotaxi that looks like a silver gift box on wheels. I have seen the future and no one is driving.
The city is back, but it’s a different city, as everyone knows. Popups and cheery signs are replacing failed businesses, but there is an edge to this.
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For one thing, November has lost its identity. Except for the gentle Thanksgiving holiday, November has become a warmup act to the Christmas shopping season. Black Friday lasted a month this year, and the pressure is relentless. You remember the old Paul Masson wine commercials featuring Orson Welles intoning a slogan in a voice like God: “We will sell no wine before its time.’’
But times have changed and November has become what we saw this month.
Some of the cable cars were decorated already, the big tree in Union Square is up, an old man was playing “Jingle Bells” on a fiddle the other afternoon, and Macy’s is lit up like Christmas.
It is still deep autumn just outside the city. I spent some time last week along the bay shore and on a hill on the slopes of Mount Tamalpais. It was one of those days without a touch of wind, so there was a bit of light haze.
Over Muir Woods and as the afternoon faded, there was a chill in the air. It was not cold, just chilly. You could feel the seasons shifting.
A lot of the changes in November happen in the natural world, just out of sight. I read last week how the salmon were returning from the far Pacific and making their way up Alameda Creek, just upstream from the city of Fremont. And just below from where I was sitting on a ridge near Muir Woods is the beautiful little Redwood Creek. Every November just after a good rain, the salmon return. It is a pageant that has been going on for thousands of years in the time between fall and winter. I went to see it in the forest two years ago. I thought it was a small natural miracle.
No miracles today, so I headed back to San Francisco. I could see big waves out in the ocean, and the horizon was opaque and without fog.
The November fog sneaks in from the inland valleys, not the ocean. It’s a tule fog, named for the plant that grows in the marshes and lowlands of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. It comes on cold and windless days just after rain. The first tule fog is often the first sign of winter.
Back in San Francisco, I had some errands in Jackson Square and the Ferry Building. Sitting outside by the bay, I was surprised at how quickly the day ended and the setting sun lit up the East Bay hills, turning the windows on the other side of the bay silver and then a sunset red. There are words for this: twilight, dusk, eventide, but it does not last long. You have to be in the moment.
We were lucky this year. The first rains came early and we got through the usual dry months of fire season without a major fire. At least not yet.
November is a time when the weather scientists take a look at the future to see what the winter will be like. Rain and wind don’t mean much for city folks. But the weather is a billion-dollar gamble on the future, on rain and wind and snow in the mountains.
The climate experts are waiting, studying El Niño and La Niña, the southern oscillation, the jet stream, the weather models, a thousand things. November, the season between seasons, is a month for waiting. December starts Monday. And then we will begin to see.
Nov 29, 2025