The Annual Vermont Foliage Season Guessing Game Has Begun

A farm, autumn colors and Indian Summer last October
in northwestern Vermont. 

 Well, honestly, we've gotten ourselves into autumn, despite the warm and vaguely humid weather we've had until yesterday.  

There's small splashes of color already on the hillsides. In the afternoon breezes on Tuesday, flurries of falling autumn leaves drifted through the air.  

Things will go quickly as they always do, and before you know it, it will be peak foliage season. 

Right now, in mid-September, while the landscape is still mostly green, we are in peak foliage guessing season.

You know what that drill is.  Will it be a spectacular season, or one that's just ho-hum.  I suppose I'll try and weigh in with my speculation in this post, but take my prediction, and everybody else's with an enormous grain of salt. 

The fact is, foliage season in Vermont and everywhere else is uneven, and in the eyes of all the beholders out there.  Even during the most brilliant of foliage seasons, you'll be driving along, turn a corner and look at an autumn hillside and say, 'Meh."

Keep driving another half mile, turn another corner, the suddenly the fantabulous colors blow your socks off. 

On top of that, I really don't think anybody has a great handle on pre-autumn weather constitutes a great foliage season and which conditions make the season a bit disappointing. 

I've seen some reports that this summer's droughts, especially in southern Vermont, might dull the colors. As VTDigger reports, if the drought worsens, leaves might simply turn brown and fall off, or go from green to orange to brown in an instant, which is pretty depressing. 

I honestly don't think the drought has been serious enough to create that scenario. Plus, some heavy rains fell on Vermont last week, and some parts of Vermont were deluged with as much as four inches of rain on Monday.  

A large sugar maple shows its autumn 
colors in Charlotte, Vermont a 
few years ago. 

Besides, I've seen how very wet years can damage a foliage season. Way back in the day - 1998 to exact - we had the wettest summer on record in Vermont. The foliage that year was rather disappointing. I think all the wetness encouraged fungus on leaves, which prevented great colors from popping out. 

On the other hand, last year was kind of droughty in northern Vermont. I know my opinion is subjective, but autumn, 2021 was easily among the most brilliant and long lasting I can remember. 

That might be because the not so serious drought stressed the trees a little, making more brilliant reds pop out in the fall. The drought wasn't serious enough to create that brown scenario.

I've also heard that a series of quite cool, clear nights in September, some with very light frosts but no hard freezes is a recipe for great foliage. The forecast for the next couple of nights fits this idea, which is great. 

But then, I turn back to last fall. September, 2021 featured a large number of warmer than normal nights, but the foliage was great.  

The areas of Vermont that I do expect a lackluster season is in those areas hit hard by those spongy caterpillars, the ones formerly known by the word for an ethnic slur. 

In those spots, luckily not the majority of the state, those horrible insects ate all the leaves off many trees. The caterpillars life cycle ended in June, so the leaves grew back. But those leaves are smaller and more raggedy than normal leaves, and the affected trees are pretty stressed. So I think colors in the caterpillar zones will be muted.

So far, I've noticed some ash and poplar leaves are dropping prematurely without showing much color. But the hillsides are still mostly green across the majority of Vermont, so there' remains plenty of opportunity for great color. 

The bottom line: You'll find gorgeous foliage in Vermont this autumn, just like every autumn. You'll just have to get on out there and find it.