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Forecasting weather for your Fall Foliage trip
The Old Farmer's Almanac
by Jeff "Foliage" Folger
This is a shot from down in Marblehead MA on Atlantic Ave and West shore drive at a sports field. It's always an early tree and this year is no different.
Greetings Fall Foliage Peepers
As most of you know I have something of a passing interest in foliage. I think it's pretty safe to say that how good the fall foliage season is, depends quite a bit on the spring and summer weather preceding it. What Mother Nature gives us in the way of cool nights and warm days matters but if we get an extreme spring or summer, it is likely to affect our foliage in a negative way. We had a rainy cool spring and summer so now we will see what our fall gives us.
The preceding season's weather directly affects the quality of the leaves and the colors we receive, so I watch the weather from Feb through Sept. I'm always wondering how different conditions will affect the fall colors. While I think that this season will be a very nice one, no one will know (until it's over) as to how all that spring rain and cooler than normal summer temps will affect the colors.
I'm of the belief that a balance between sun and rain without extreme swings of the pendulum is best for the trees. The Maine forest pathologist says the trees are very healthy this year and have put on tons of leaves over the past few years. (That's a good thing)
I'm also seeing some tar spot fungus on Maples in my neighborhood and Heather up in Greenville Maine says she has heard of maples (not in Greenville but nearby) just dropping their leaves. While this doesn't seem to be widespread it seems all that rain is causing stress for the trees and contributing to this fungus. We'll just have to see what the rest of the fall brings.
I just got my 2010 Old Farmer's Almanac and I thought we could see how accurate the weather forecast is compared to what we actually get. The 2009 Almanac says for May that we were to get 4" of rain... I think we got more than that and the warm and seasonable temps never materialized either.. For June, the 65 degree average seem a bit on the warm side, compared to actual and the sunny hot temps didn't materialize until August.. So they weren't too far off and considering they wrote this the preceding year, In my opinion they did pretty good.
They said for Sept that, 1 through 4 Sept will be sunny and fair This was right on and the 5th through the 9th thunderstorms were expected... Nope sunny, cool and comfortable, total miss there! (is that a 50/50 ratio so far?) For the 10th through 15th, showers then sunny, well pretty accurate. We had sun then two days of rain and then sun. So far the Almanac is pretty close. I'll keep track and see how we're doing at the end of the month.
I'm posting a picture from last Thursday and while I don't believe we are "turning" yet, many people feel that if they see a tree with red leaves on it then we are turning... In my opinion we aren't turning until the majority of the trees are showing color and this is my opinion only, and not a hard & fast rule.
Starting this Thursday until late Oct at 11:10AM on your AM dial (980 WCAP radio) I'll be talking with the hosts about the upcoming fall foliage season with suggestions for the leaf peeper's weekend travels. Don't worry, If you don't live in the area, you can still listen to the broadcast by going to their website www.980wcap.com and catch it streaming to your computer.
Look for my Blog to go Bi-weekly this week as I start to ramp up for the foliage season.
Don't forget to login on the forum and Jeff's contest to guess my max mileage this season and to win either a boxed card set of my foliage series or a HD DVD fall video. (I didn't make it; I just purchased it on Amazon)
Did you know that Yankee is up on Facebook and Twitter? Click on the links following and you can get your updates all year long!
Yankee's Foliage Fan page on Facebook has 280 fans as of today! and Yankee on Twitter.
Autumn is here (Well to me, it is!) and I hope to hear from you throughout the rest of the fall, if you have any questions please feel free to ask them here in the comments section or over in the foliage forum and I and the other forum members will do their best to answer them
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