Welcome to
The Fall Color Guy
See when the best times are to come experience beautiful fall foliage in Western North Carolina.
A message from the Fall Color Guy
The goals of the Fall Color Guy website are to provide updates on the development of fall leaf colors in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, primarily in North Carolina, and to provide stories about nature and the environment. Each week, starting in late July or early August, I begin scouting out various locations in the mountains for signs that the trees are preparing for the fall, and I post my observations on this website.
The fall color season brings anywhere from $1 to $2 Billion dollars to the economy of western North Carolina, and supports local businesses ranging from motels/hotels, restaurants, travel services, to a variety of stores, and which provide income to many people in this part of the state. It is, for example, the busiest tourist season for cities such as Asheville, Boone, and West Jefferson, and it attracts people to North Carolina from many different states up and down the east coast and midwest.
Because people want to view the leaves when they reach peak color, I attempt to predict when that will be each year, scoping out locations near or on the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is the main road that most tourists use to view the leaves. Weekends tend to be the busiest times and so I try to provide my prognostications in mid-week so people have time to decide whether to come up or not. For those making lodging reservations, which must be done weeks to months in advance, they can find when peak color season occurs on average, so they can reserve their rooms in advance.
However, the timing of peak color is highly dependent on current weather and can vary from year to year. The most influential weather determining peak color timing is the last two weeks in September and the first two weeks in October. If those weeks show a cooling trend, then colors will reach their peak around mid-October at elevations between 2500 and 4000 feet; earlier for higher elevations and later for lower ones. But if it is warm during those weeks, peak colors will be delayed by anywhere from 3-4 days
to up to 2 weeks if unusually warm. There is no way to know whether this will happen until it does, so if you make reservations for mid-October and we have a warm fall, you may arrive ahead of peak color.
On this webpage you can also find essays on the science of fall leaf colors (it is a fascinating subject in its own right), which include discussions of the pigments responsible for the different colors, how climate change might affect fall colors, and the economic impacts of fall leaf color tourism. I hope you find these interesting andstimulating.
I also provide some tips on having a good experience in the mountains, taking good photos of fall colors, and there are graphics showing the main species of trees and the colors their leaves turn in the fall. I also provide photos of fall wildflowers because the Southern Appalachians have a high diversity of plant species, many of which flower during the fall and are quite beautiful.
Finally, I will be working to include some of my postings from previous years so you can see the variation from year to year when leaves reached their peak color and whether the quality of the colors varied. If you have any suggestions for the webpage please send them to me at the link provided here.
Howie Neufeld, The Fall Color Guy
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