The Rural Intelligence Leaf-Peeper's Primer
Where to go for up-to-the-minute foliage reports.
Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower.
That’s quite a hopeful sentiment coming from Albert Camus. For myself, it’s a bittersweet moment when I see my first variegated leaf. It’s always too early — where has the summer gone? — and yet, Camus is right: it’s the signal of the beauty to come. In the interest of helping our readers plan their foliage expeditions, we’ve compiled a list of resources for you to consult as the season offers up its gifts. I suggest you bookmark this page so you can come back to it frequently.
Meteorologist Dave Epstein, who writes for The Boston Globe and is the weather guy for GBH, Boston's local NRP station, wrote on its website that "the first weekend I would say is the weekend around the 21st of September, far northern Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine. That’s where it will all begin,” he said. “I think that the places to go in northern New England will be that final weekend of September, the first weekend of October, into northern Vermont, northern New Hampshire.” (He also says that "peak" is kind of nonsense since it's really waves of color. So we'll go in search of the waves, how's that?)
One of the best fall foliage predictors I've found is courtesy of New England Foliage, a Yankee Magazine offshoot. Move the dot and you operate a nifty foliage map that shows the progression of color day by day. New England Foliage also has an archive of fall-focused articles, everything we at Rural Intelligence don’t have the staff to compile. It’s got great info: foliage drives, corn mazes, apple orchards, fall foliage train tours. Not necessarily in the RI region, but you can’t beat Yankee Magazine for everything New England you never knew you wanted to know.
A recent discovery is Explore Fall, a website dedicated to fall foliage. It offers a fall map detailing the progression of color through out the U.S., with a ten-day forcast for planning, a blog, and a map archive of fall foliage progress in previous years.
At smokymountains.com, the fall foliage prediction map estimates when fall foliage will peak nationwide. This interactive map colors itself in as the days and months progress. And for you science types, it also offers some lovely illustrations and explanations: what creates the colors, why leaves fall (to burden me, of course), and what happens to the falling leaves (the ones I don’t have to rake and bag).
Here are some other websites you can check.
The Foliage Network leads you to foliage trackers for each New England state, and The Weather Channel has a fall foliage peak times map.
To get additional information on specific states, I Love New York gives weekend reports, along with the best foliage spots and a New York leaf identifier. Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection offers an estimated date of peak foliage.
Vist MA suggests 11 spots where you can see fall foliage from high above.
But really, as the Connecticut Department of Energy — and Dave Epstein —say, don't worry about missing "peak" color. You will still be able to enjoy a full array of colors that can be found before "peak."
So go forth and peep! And please, let us know if you've found the ultimate color-drenched vista.
