Two noted Appalachian natural phenomena photographers posted entirely different assessments of early fall color on social media in recent days.
“Grayson Highlands color this year is far out surpassing anything I’ve seen there over the last 7-8 years and it’s still a few days away from being PEAK,” Billy Bowling, of Lebanon, Virginia, posted on X. “Now’s the time to get to the high country if you wanna see it!”
But Peter Forister, a Virginia Tech graduate from Charlottesville and a founder of the website ExploreFall, had an entirely opposite report from a different higher elevation venue.
“Ran up to Davis, WV this morning — and unfortunately the fall color situation is quite bad,” Forister posted on X. “Severe drought here has effectively ended the color. Probably the worst year I’ve ever seen in this region.”
Yes, they both can be right.
As we move into the prime leaf-peeping season in Southwest and Southside Virginia over the next two to three weeks, with foliage gradually turning at lower and lower elevations, it is important that we don’t paint with too broad a brush in describing the vividness of the colors, or lack thereof, in various locations across our region.
Subtleties of preceding rainfall, temperature microclimates, tree species and many other factors can make a difference within just a few miles in how brilliant or lackluster the fall foliage display is.
Which means, if the colors aren’t great near where you live, you can often drive to somewhere not far away to find more vibrant hues.
Dryness a concern
Leaves turn colors in the fall as photosynthesis slows with a lower sun angle, shorter days and generally cooler temperatures. Variances in weather conditions can affect how quickly and how brilliantly the leaves turn. Very generally, having cool nights and warm, sunny afternoons with a Goldilocks-approved moderate amount of rain, not too much or too little, is ideal for brilliant foliage shows.
Perhaps the chief concern regarding this year’s fall foliage in our region has been relative dryness.
This alone likely explains the difference in foliage brilliance between the high country of eastern West Virginia and that of the Grayson Highlands area of Southwest Virginia. Much of West Virginia is in severe to extreme drought on last week’s U.S. Drought Monitor, while most of Southwest and Southside Virginia is in the much less extreme “abnormally dry” and “moderate drought” categories.
Some rain in the last week of September with a slow-moving trough and a slight injection of moisture around the circulation of Hurricane Imelda helped moisten things recently in much of Virginia. But very little of that reached West Virginia.
Much of West Virginia was getting more meaningful rain on Tuesday with an approaching cold front, with a lesser smattering of showers further eastward into Virginia.
Temperature-wise, summer largely broke off as July flipped to August, with only a brief resurgence near mid-August. We had lots of unseasonably cool mornings toward the end of August and the start of September, but it has trended a bit warmer than normal since. Yet, we have avoided rolling back into a summerlike heat wave and have had some cool mornings even amid the warmth.
Having so many cool mornings plus warm afternoons and at least a reasonable amount of rain may have gotten the foliage turning sooner and more brilliantly in the nearly mile-high elevations around Grayson Highlands.
Chilly mornings ahead
This week will offer some of the chilly mornings that will feel like fall and potentially help the leaves turn a little more, as cooler, drier air sinks in from Canada behind the cold front that brought Tuesday night’s showers.
Most locations will drop into the 30s to lower 40s on Friday morning. There might even be some scattered frost, especially in protected valleys west of the Blue Ridge.
For the weekend, there will likely be a coastal storm — probably non-tropical — to watch off the coast of the Carolinas. Most of the rain looks to stay east of our region as of now, but there is some chance it edges back to the west as the low stalls and dawdles a bit. Whether it rains or not, north to northeast flow around the backside of the low will keep some cooler air in our region.
The overall tilt over the next couple of weeks appears to favor warmer than normal temperatures with broad high pressure over much of the central and eastern U.S., but not runaway summerlike heat, and there are some signs of possible cold fronts sliding in to break the warmth and bring chilly mornings.
The outlook for fall colors is mixed, and probably will vary quite a bit from location to location across our region. It probably won’t be the best or worst year for colorful foliage at most locations, but as always, it will be worth a gander as our mountains and eventually our hills and dales at lower elevations put on their Joseph’s coats.
Journalist Kevin Myatt has been writing about weather for 20 years. His weekly column, appearing on Wednesdays, is sponsored by Oakey’s, a family-run, locally-owned funeral home with locations throughout the Roanoke Valley. Sign up for his weekly newsletter:
