Fall Foliage Peak: It Looks, Feels Like Autumn In Many States

Now that fall has officially arrived, it’s starting to look like it with foliage at or near the peak of beauty in many parts of the United States. And it’s going to feel like it, too, with weather forecasters calling for temperatures to plunge in many areas of the country in October.

Trees in much of the northern United States are ablaze with stunning scarlet, vibrant orange and sunny yellow leaves. Colorado’s ash trees appear touched in gold. And if you’re planning a trip anywhere in New Mexico, Wyoming or Montana, be prepared to be amazed, according to an interactive tool that helps travelers time their fall foliage tours with accuracy and precision.

That’s according to the an interactive tool developed by Smokymountains.com, a cabin rental site, to help visitors plan their trips to the Great Smoky Mountains. The tool uses using hundreds of thousands of data points from private and government sources, including historical and forecasted temperatures and precipitation data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, historical leaf peak trends and peak observation trends.

Fall Foliage Prediction Map

In some parts of the country, grab your winter gear if you’re planning to ogle autumn’s glory. But in other parts of the country, pack shorts and tees.

Montanans in the northwest part of the state are already digging out from a fierce early fall snowstorm that dropped several feet of snow. The eastern half of the country isn’t expected to be similarly walloped anytime soon, but AccuWeather expects October temperatures to plunge.

Some areas in upstate New York and northern New England have already seen frost and freezing temperatures and could see overnight lows in the teens by the weekend, AccuWeather said.

Paul Pastelok, the site’s top long-range forecaster, said much of the interior Northeast is expected to see the lowest temperatures of the season “and the likelihood of widespread frost” this weekend after a September that ranged about 2 to 6 degrees above normal.

The valleys of the central Appalacians could see overnight lows in the 20s and suburbs in the region could experience lows in the mid-30s to the lower 40s, according to AccuWeather.

AccuWeather predicts above-normal temperatures in much of the western United States, but said temperatures are expected to be much colder in an area from Minnesota and Iowa to the Eastern Seaboard and as far south as Kentucky and Virginia.

The Fall Foliage Prediction Map helps leaf lovers pinpoint the best dates for a visit.

“The predictive fall leaf map helps potential travelers, photographers and leaf peepers determine the precise future date that the leaves will peak in each area of the continental United States. By utilizing the date selector at the bottom of the map, the user can visually understand how fall will progress over a region,” data scientist Wes Melton, the website’s chief technical officer, said in a statement.

“We believe this interactive tool will enable travelers to take more meaningful fall vacations, capture beautiful fall photos and enjoy the natural beauty of autumn,” he said. “Our nationwide fall foliage prediction map is unique — it is one of the only fall leaf tools that provides accurate predictions for the entire continental United States.”

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The major factors that determine the fall foliage peak are sunlight, precipitation, soil moisture and temperature.

“Nothing is 100 percent accurate,” David Angotti, the co-founder of the website told Patch, but the tool “gets pretty darned close.”