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Fall foliage affected by weather in Sept/Oct
Yankee's Old Farmer's Almanac accuracy
by Jeff "Foliage" Folger
a view on the lake
Greetings Leaf Peepers
I was asked to rate the 2009 foliage season and compare it to the last few years. I've thought this over and I didn't consider it fair to just go by my observations. So I judged it by the photo results on Yankee's reader gallery to see how others reader's photos along with mine turned out. Great by the way...
It's no mystery that we as leaf peepers had the deck stacked against us with roughly 15 rain days in Oct and that doesn't account for non-rain days that were just cloudy. Plus we were hit with one Nor' Easter and winds on those rain days that brought down the leaves (especially the reds) earlier than normal. To top that off we had Snow in mid Oct!
Results: All in all I found with all this "bad" weather the photographs that are up on the
Yankee Foliage reader's gallery really show that if you persevere and just get out and shoot you will be amazed by the results. I've looked over the a few of the 780+ pictures in the 2009 contest and lets just say I'm glad I don't have to try to pick the best shot from all of those. It's not the numbers of shots but it's the wonderful shots by everybody that were submitted.
Old Farmer's Almanac accuracy: In early Oct I said I would revisit the
Old Farmer's Almanac and see how accurate it was for Oct. I didn't keep good enough records, so I went online to NOAA and found their climate archive to see what October's weather looked like to them. Now I'm not a statistician person so if my estimates aren't professionally accurate please forgive me!
There were 15 rain days in October and the Almanac said:
- 1-5: rain & snow (well the rain was accurate but the snow didn't come for 2 more weeks)
6-10: sunny mild (we had 3 days of rain this week)
11-17: rain THEN SUNNY (where was the sun this week with 4 days of rain)
18-22: Showers, mild ( Here we had only 1 day of really cold "rain", but who would have thought it!!! SNOW)
23-28: Rain, then sunny (right on here)
29-31: showers seasonable: (Again right on but where was the wind advisory?)
Considering this was forecast 12 months prior I think a better than 60% accuracy rating is amazing! They may not have had 100% day by day accuracy but for the month, I think they really called it.
What's coming in 2010? Well the Old Farmer's Almanac says mostly average temps for the year and it will be a dryer year than 2009. And the big news is October is going to be??? Well I can't give it all away, pick up your own copy on the stands today and see for yourself.
Make your own conclusions as to what kind of year we're going to have?
Next week, "Sugar Shacks are they magnets for great fall foliage color"?
If you find yourself with some time and you would like to discuss your foliage discoveries, you can always discuss your fall thoughts either on the Yankee foliage forum which is a great place to chat with foliage peepers from around the world. Or if you prefer the social network of Facebook, you can discuss your thoughts over on the Yankee foliage Facebook fan page. Also Butch on the \[Facebook fan page\]\[5\] is holding a contest so come by to check it out!
Click here to follow my foliage reports in real time on twitter? Visit my Facebook fan page for Vistaphotography
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