Today looks to be great in the High Country, so later Ill take a drive to get a late season appraisal of the colors now. Most of the sourwoods have dropped their leaves, and same for red maples, but there are some late changing sugar maples and now the oaks are highlighting the landscape, giving off a yellow/gold color (I am really at a loss for exactly how to characterize this shade of yellow) interspersed with deep reds from other oak species. So, despite a lot of leafless trees, there is still color to appreciate up here. Here is what David Crotts, as astute autumn leaf color observer says: Recent days have been quite an experience with leaves in Piedmont. For a long while things were at least 5 days, maybe more, behind schedule. Then the cold weather came, with one freezing night. Leaves fast-forwarded about a week in a matter of a couple of days and fall foliage is pretty much on target for a normal year. I rode up to Burlington and back today to see a relative and there is a lot of peak color on I-40 from Hillsborough on to Burlington. Points east are a couple of days away from peak but have a lot of color in many of the maples. From a quality point of view, the foliage is at least average and maybe a little better than average. All the usual colors are present. The crepe myrtle in the Raleigh area are a few days ahead of schedule and are spectacular. I was going to take a foothills trip up through Yadkin County up to charlotteville area but it may be too late so Im just going to ride through the Piedmont area. From the webcams it looks like Grayson Highlands peak (3,900 ft) was around the 17th and Boone area at 3,300 feet was around 19th or maybe later. My grandkids were in the Asheville area this weekend and my stepson said leaves were very late and disappointing. Dan Pittillo, my predecessor in reporting on fall foliage color, says colors are actually quite good this year in most locations, but in patches. Some show more colors than others, so you have to move around to get the best colors. In the Appalachian State University parking lot D, there is a string of maples that are peaking now (perhaps these are the red/silver maple hybrids that Jack Gossett was mentioning in his posts). And were still waiting on the Bradford pears to turn. Ill post pictures later today. Enjoy!!
Posted on: Sat, 02 Nov 2013 13:07:40 +0000
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