Yosemite Closes Tioga and Glacier Point Roads for Snow

Yosemite's two high roads are closed. The National Park Service shut Tioga Road and Glacier Point Road at 5 p.m. on Thursday, November 12, 2026, because a series of incoming storms is forecast to bring snow to the high country. The park announced the closures a day ahead, on November 11, and stated the terms plainly: crews will evaluate road conditions after the storms pass. No reopening date has been given.

Tioga Road is the closure that redraws the map. It's the continuation of Highway 120 through the park, the only road that crosses Yosemite from west to east, running from Crane Flat over Tioga Pass at 9,943 feet. With it shut, there's no through route across this stretch of the Sierra in the park at all, and a driver bound for the eastern Sierra faces the long way around, north or south of the range. Glacier Point Road's closure is narrower but total: it removes vehicle access toward Glacier Point and its trailheads.

This is the third time this autumn that snow has closed these roads. Both shut on October 29, reopened on November 5, and closed again a week later, and the park's own record shows why nobody at Yosemite treats a November closure as a surprise. Tioga Road closed for its season on November 15 in 2023, November 11 in 2024 and November 12 in 2025. The road is typically open from late May or June until sometime in November, and the first storm that puts snow on the pavement decides which November day ends the season.

The forecast behind the decision isn't a dusting. The National Weather Service in Hanford posted a winter storm warning for the Sierra high country running from Friday into early Tuesday, with heavy snow above 6,000 feet and totals that reach toward 20 inches in the warned area, and two further storms are expected behind the first. On the ground, the closure hardened quickly: Caltrans shut Highway 120 from Crane Flat to Tioga Pass early on Saturday, November 14. A road the park reopens after one storm is a different bet from a road facing three in a row.

The park's rules around the closure are specific, and they bind even where the pavement looks clear. Overnight parking isn't allowed on Tioga Road or Glacier Point Road, including every parking lot reachable from them. Tire chains may be required anywhere in the park while the storms work through, and the park tells visitors to check the forecast before they come and to carry chains in case controls are imposed on the roads that stay open.

What stays open matters as much as what closed. Yosemite Valley and the park's west-side entrances don't shut for this; the closure takes the high country, not the park. A visitor already holding a November trip doesn't have to cancel it, but any plan that leans on Tioga Road as a crossing, or on Glacier Point as a viewpoint reached by car, is done until the park says otherwise.

The only number that settles a trip is the park's own. Yosemite records road conditions at 209/372-0200; press 1, then 1 again, for the current status of both roads. The park's conditions page carries the same alerts, and it's the page to check on the morning of a drive rather than the night before, because a storm cycle like this one changes the answer between the two.

Whether this closure is the season's last one is the question the park has deliberately left open. A temporary closure can lift after a storm, and this pair of roads proved it on November 5. But the calendar, the three-year run of mid-November season endings, and a forecast with more snow behind it all point the same way. Travelers planning a cross-Sierra drive should plan it on another road, and treat a Tioga reopening as a bonus rather than a schedule.