We have a GKE cluster with auto-upgrading nodes. We recently noticed a node become unschedulable and eventually deleted that we suspect was being upgraded automatically for us. Is there a way to confirm (or otherwise) in Stackdriver that this was indeed the cause what was happening?
I think your question has been already answered in the comments. Just as addition automatic upgrades occur at regular intervals at the discretion of the GKE team. To get more control you can create a Maintenance Windows as explained here. This is basically a time frame that you choose in which automatic upgrades should occur.