Fall colors are arriving a little earlier this year for some trees. A dry summer and a dry beginning to fall were big contributors to the colors arriving on the trees earlier than usual, or even brown leaves falling off. It\u2019s due to drought stress.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it all amounts to really reducing the impact of the fall colors when they normally would happen in mid to late October,\u201d said Donald J. Leopold, distinguished teaching professor with SUNY ESF.<\/p>\n
Leopold said the ideal weather conditions for nice fall foliage are the same as the conditions for growing.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut in areas that tend to be relatively dry and on hillsides that are sort of south and west facing, which tend to be dry, a lot of those trees are not going to be part of the party for fall color this year,\u201d said Leopold.<\/p>\n
But many areas haven\u2019t been experiencing ideal growing conditions, with spots in the state seeing drought from a dry summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaple and red maple this time of year generally doesn’t have color. It’s not supposed to have color until the middle of October, later in October. But \u2026 the chlorophyll is breaking down so that the green is disappearing. And underneath it are these other colors that are being unmasked. And although this might be viewed as well, that’s kind of neat, it’s not because it means that the tree is terribly stressed,\u201d said Leopold.<\/p>\n
Earlier than what\u2019s typical for New York, colors are already changing, and it\u2019s because of the stress from a lack of rain. Stress that can have am impact beyond the orange and red displays.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt does depend on the degree of drought stress, drought stress can lead to insect infestations and disease issues and just a general decline. So, it’s not like, ‘well, this doesn’t really matter in the big scheme of things’ because it does; it does contribute to the health of the forest overall when you have these big drought events,\u201d said Leopold.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have had some rain recently. It\u2019s probably not having much of an impact as we’ve already seen that transition start. It’s not going to reverse. They’re not going to go back to being green,\u201d said Spectrum News 1 Meteorologist Jack Durkin.<\/p>\n
\u201cLove being outside and seeing the different seasons. And fall is one of our favorites. And looking at all the different color leaves, it’s really fun,\u201d said Kaitlin Seaman from Penfield.<\/p>\n
Autumn lovers still have nice foliage to look forward to.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you won\u2019t have to go far to see some really nice fall colors. But looking back, you know, you might say, ‘well, it wasn’t the most spectacular year that I can recall,’\u201d said Leopold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fall colors are arriving a little earlier this year for some trees. A dry summer and a dry…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":266784,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,17544,17549,17543,139055,405,403,17050,50,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,5284,313],"class_list":{"0":"post-266783","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-capital-region","10":"tag-central-ny","11":"tag-hudson-valley","12":"tag-krystal-cole","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-new-york-state","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-newyork","18":"tag-newyorkcity","19":"tag-ny","20":"tag-nyc","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-united-states-of-america","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-usa","27":"tag-vod","28":"tag-weather"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115293872797154738","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}