Fall is fast approaching, y’all. So, you may be wondering when will be the best time to get out and see the changing colors on Virginia's trees.
John Seiler is a professor of forest biology, and he says pinpointing the best days to see the beautiful fall foliage is actually easier than predicting the weather forecast.
“Because it’s very, very much tied to the length of day – and that never varies from year to year, so it makes it pretty easy,” he says.
So, for us this year, Seiler says the October 25th through November 1st window will likely be the peak to see the reds, oranges and yellows on the trees – but that window could move a week or so in either direction.
He adds that it isn’t really even possible for Western Virginia to ever have a “bad” fall foliage season. New England, for example, is heavily dependent on the performance of sugar maple trees.
“If sugar maple is kind of off that year, well, they’re going to have an off year," Seiler explains. "But we have red maple, sourwood, black gum, scarlet oak, white oak, sweet birch, chestnut oak – I could go on and on and on about it because there are a lot of tree species.”
There is one exception, though – how much rain we get in the late summer and early fall can have an impact on how red some trees are. Seiler says the red colors will be there no matter what, but trees will really pop with that color if the first part of September isn’t super dry. So far, it has been.
Seiler adds that the days becoming shorter during the fall months is what triggers the change in leaf color, not temperatures.
“That signals chlorophyll to break down – and that’s not because they’re getting lazy or anything – they break the chlorophyll down and they reabsorb all those nutrients. It’s quite smart design" he explains. "They pull a huge amount of it back into the tissues and the buds and they store it because they can’t use the chlorophyll in the winter.”
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
