Looking For Autumn Foliage? The Fall Color Hotline Can Help

Looking For Autumn Foliage? The Fall Color Hotline Can Help

I’m KayDee Gilkey with the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report after this.

School has begun, mornings and evenings are cooler and Autumn officially arrives next week. When it comes to autumn foliage, there are two components to the changing of the fall colors every year.

Shorten day length is a predictable component to the turning of leaves. Paul Schaberg of the USDA Forest Service explains the second, not so predictable one.
Schaberg: “What is a lot less predictable is that in at least some tree species fall colors is progressed a lot by low temperatures, like frost at night and just cold spells and what not. That changes so much from year-to-year and from location-to-location and even elevation in the same area.”

Each fall the Forest Service has a Fall Color Hotline number you can call to learn more about the foliage in your area. Schaberg shares more.

Schaberg: “So the Fall Color Hotline tries to incorporate both that kind of known progress of the initiation of fall colors because of shorten day length. But to integrate with that the more variable, year-to-year, area-to-area changes due to low temperatures and that kind of thing.”

The hotline number is 800-354-4595. You can also go online to fs.fed.us/fallcolors to learn more about the autumn foliage status in your area.
I’m KayDee Gilkey with the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.