Foliage Forecast →

New England's Foliage Forecast

October outlook from the New England foresters

by Sara E. Pratt

The fall foliage season seems to be shaping up nicely around New England, despite a late season heat wave and dry spell that kick-started the color change in some areas and may ultimately extend the season, but also might mute the colors somewhat.

"It's as good as we hoped it would be," said Jim Crocker, Director of Public Information for the Maine Department of Conservation. "The leaves are turning and the colors are popping."

Warmer temperatures at the end of September may have slowed the season somewhat, Crocker said. "Foliage in upper Piscataquis, Somerset and Aroostook Counties is going to be a little later than we thought, but that's not necessarily a bad thing," he noted. "It gives folks more time to get there."

For those with plans to visit Maine around Columbus Day weekend, Crocker recommends northern Maine for the best foliage viewing. "Zones 4, 5, 6 and 7 on the mainefoliage.commap would be the most interesting and spectacular," he said. "If you drew a line from Eustis over to Calais, everything north of that should be real good on Columbus Day weekend."

In Central and Southern Maine, he said, "it looks like it's probably going to be the weekend after Columbus Day that will be the best." But even after that, Crocker added, "we've still got plenty of time to go here."

In New Hampshire, "we've got one of the best seasons going," said Kyle Lombard, a forest health specialist with the New Hampshire Division of Forests and Lands.

This summer there was little drought and few anthracnose diseases (a group of fungal diseases that attack dogwoods, sycamores, oaks, and maples). A minor heat wave in the last week of September -- during which New Hampshire saw temperatures in the 90s -- will not affect the foliage much.

"By late August or September the trees are already done growing, so anything that happens after that has almost no effect on the tree," he said. The only place it will matter is sites that were dry to begin with. "It might trigger early color on dry sites with shallow soils," Lombard said. "The mountainous, rocky, ledgy areas where the drought really plays a role, some of those sites are shutting down a little early."

The most important factor triggering color change is day length. Other factors, such as wind and rain, play a larger role in how the foliage season plays out, Lombard said, since they can strip the leaves from the trees.

In Vermont, the trend in recent years has been for the fall foliage season to come later and be shorter, said Steve Sinclair, Director of Forests.

"This year, it's been the opposite," he said. "It was a little earlier than what we would normally predict at this time and it has all indications of being a long season."

So far, the season is off to a good start, according to Ginger Anderson, Vermont's Chief of Forest Resource Management, who supervises the county foresters and leaf spotters.

"In general, we're seeing peak along the ridges in the Green Mountains and in the Northeast Kingdom, but we're also seeing some good roadside coloring, especially in sumacs, pretty much statewide," Anderson said. "The southern part of the state is a little bit behind, there's not quite as much change there. The further north you go, the more you see."

Peak foliage usually falls around Columbus Day Weekend, but "we've been noticing that it's getting progressively later in recent years," Sinclair said. "This year, however, it looks like it will be Columbus Day weekend."

The foliage may also not be as brilliant as originally expected. "The colors have been perhaps a little more muted this year because we've been going through a bit of a drought," Sinclair said.

That, combined with the recent high temperatures, could cause the leaves to curl up and potentially fall off a little earlier but, "overall, fall foliage is more based on the past year's efforts than necessarily the current year," Sinclair noted. "So what's happening this week is not having all that much impact on the fall foliage we're currently noticing."

In Massachusetts, where they've had very little rain since early August, the leaves are starting to turn, but "it's very much terrain-specific," said Charlie Burnham, Program Supervisor for Forest Health. "You can drive five miles down the road and it'll be different."

The lowland red swamp maples and some birches in drier areas are "already starting to go by," he said. "Right now, I'm seeing the cherries, the maple, and the birch are starting to change and the red maple is 50 percent changed already."

The dry weather has moved the season up a little bit, but a quirk of the calendar may still prove the old wisdom about Columbus Day, which falls on October 8 this year.

"We used to say that peak foliage in Central Mass happened around the traditional date of Columbus Day weekend (the second Monday in October)," Burnham said. "This year, Columbus Day is about six days earlier than normal, but because of the heat and drought, the foliage may still peak around Columbus Day weekend."

In Massachusetts, the color change progresses from the northwestern part of the state to the southeast with different colors dominating different regions.

"West of the Connecticut River has a lot of sugar maple so you're going to get your oranges and your bright yellows," Burnham said. "And as you get down towards the South Shore, you get more of an oak forest, so you're going to get more of your reds down there. I think we're still going to have nice fall foliage, just a little bit earlier."

In Connecticut, Don Smith, Director of the Division of Forestry, said the foliage was "not bad" considering the state has documented the third driest August and the second driest September on record.

"However, we've had spots of rain here and there, and, by and large, the color is still very good right now," he said.

Smith noted a similar situation to that in other states. "Some of the trees that are already growing in marginal areas, such as the red maple swamps or sandy, shallow areas, have turned color and dropped their leaves, but that's pretty localized," he said.

Smith predicts the northeast and northwest corners of the state should be coming to peak around October 13. The rest of the state is expected to follow in the week or week and a half after, with the color filtering down through the center and out the panhandle.

"The majority of the state is still looking forward to good color," he said. "There are some places where the color has changed already, for example, some of the roadsides where there are sandy soils or salt damage, but if you look beyond that -- for example, down through the valleys -- there should be wonderful color."

The key is in knowing where to look.

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Yankee Magazine assistant editor Sara Pratt holds master's degrees in earth and environmental sciences and journalism from Columbia University, where she researched climate change and investigated urban subsistence fishing. After years of traveling for scientific field work -- from Arctic field stations to oceanographic vessels -- she now travels for pleasure, still seeking trips with a geologic focus. She has written for Discover, Geotimes, and Oceanus magazines.