Extreme weather in the East, but fall could still be brilliant
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Tree peepers -- those retired couples, newlyweds and others who flock to states such as Vermont and Massachusetts in droves for the fall foliage season -- can breathe a bit more easily. Despite a summer filled with extreme weather, the trees show every sign of putting on their annual display of bright oranges, rich reds and buttery yellows.
Hurricane-turned-tropical-storm Irene may have flooded rivers and destroyed country roads, but it isn’t expected to have hurt the chances for fall color in the Northeast.
Marc Abrams, a professor of forest ecology and physiology at Penn State, said the heavy rains that plagued the region wouldn’t adversely affect the colors of the foliage this year. Of course, the rains won’t necessarily help the colors either.
Rather, the quality of the fall display has a lot to do with what happens in the three to four weeks leading up to the color change.
‘As long as we get a nice normal cool-down, we should be in good shape,’ he said in an interview with The Times. ‘If we have nice cool, sunny, dry days, that will help break down the chlorophyll and expose those rich colors.’
He said the worst years for foliage color are when the East experiences what’s called an Indian summer -- when the weather stays warm and muggy into October. Abrams said that fools the trees into thinking they have a little extra growing season. In other words, their leaves remain green.
The most colorful foliage comes in the years when the growing season has average temperatures and either average or above-average precipitation followed by dry, cooler weather.
‘When all those things line up, you have that once-in-a-decade, super year where you just go out and are amazed by the brilliance of the color,’ he said.
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--Deborah Netburn
