Don’t let the 90-degree days fool you: Meteorological fall has started. And if the recently cooler mornings aren’t enough to get you excited about all-things pumpkin, maybe the interactive map below will. Use the slider bar to watch the movement of expected peak fall foliage colors from north to south across the continental US.
The map comes from the 2021 fall foliage prediction map produced annually by smokymountains.com. The idea is to give everyone a chance to figure out when they’ll get to spot the best of fall’s color explosion, and the forecast is based on both historical and forecasted temperature and precipitation data from NOAA, historical leaf peak trends, peak observation trends and model outputs from previous years. You can visit the site for more details, or you can use the embed above to explore when you can expect the gold and red to come to you or whether you’d rather travel to northern climes to see it sooner.
If your goal is to sit tight in your home office chair, the Atlanta area is anticipated to start seeing some change around October 4, with the real show happening around October 25th. Start getting your insta-ready ‘fits and refillable PSL mugs ready now because we’ll just have a couple weeks of the really brilliant hues.