After Rough Summer, How Will Vermont Fall Foliage Fare?

A fungus brought on by Vermont's extremely wet, humid
summer afflicts these sugar maple leaves in Richmond,
Vermont. Though the fungus won't harm the trees, it 
could somewhat mute fall colors this year. 

UPDATE: I should have mentioned when I first wrote this post that people who visit Vermont this fall should have no trouble seeing the sights and the beauty and getting around. 

There's been questions from out of staters as to whether they can actually come up to Vermont, given the devastating floods we had in July.

The answer of course is a resounding yes.

The roads are back open, the vast majority of businesses that cater to tourists visiting Vermont were either undamaged by the flood or have re-opened. 

That's not to minimize the continued suffering and uncertainty for the thousands of people directly affected by the flood.

But visitors will see our usual beautiful landscape intact

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION

The first fall colors of the season are starting to pop up in Vermont, a little late, but still noticeable in just a few isolated pockets.    

The swamp maples have really started to turn red, and some of the more precarious sugar maples out there are showing some isolated pockets of  color.  Even so, it's still mostly green out there. Once again, it looks like fall foliage season in Vermont tis running a little late. 

So, will this season be a vibrant one, or a bust?

 First of all, predicting the timing and especially the vibrancy of fall colors is harder than forecasting the weather, so expect some misses on this issue.  

Maybe more importantly, you'll definitely find a lot of beauty this fall. It might or might not be as vibrant as the past couple of years, but it will still be stunning. 

The last two years brought perfect summer and early fall weather that led to brilliant foliage seasons. However,  I'm personally leaning toward a prediction of a somewhat more muted autumn show in 2023.  I suspect some of the more vibrant reds that really make the colors pop might be missing this year. 

As we well know, it was an incredibly rainy, incredibly humid summer, even if it wasn't exactly the hottest one in memory. All that moisture lingering everywhere encourages fungi and other issues on leaves.

I've noticed in many locations, many of the leaves on sugar maples are turning yellow with spots of black, and falling prematurely. That's a fungus caused in large part by the rainy summer weather. This ultimately won't hurt the health of the trees, but it could well mute the autumn show.  At least i some areas. 

Another wild card is the intense, record breaking freeze Vermont suffered on May 18.  The freeze destroyed new oak, sumac and ash leaves. They shriveled up, turned black and fell off. By the end of June, these trees put out a new set of leaves, but the foliage was thinner than we otherwise might expect. 

Most of the cold hardy leaves, like on maples, beech, poplar and such, but I don't know whether there was hidden damage that could affect fall color.  

The Vermont landscape still looks really green now that
we're into mid-September. Warm weather this summer
and September so far appears as if it might make 
for a somewhat late fall foliage season. 

There's another more permanent foliage disappointment starting now. The emerald ash borer long expected to go on attack against Vermont's numerous white ash trees, is really going on the attack  now. 

This summer, I saw big swaths of dead and dying ash trees, all victims of the emerald ash borer. Over the coming few years, this awful bug will decimate Vermont's ash trees, as it has in other states.

This is a big disappointment, of course. Ash trees add variety to the fall foliage pallete,  They punctuate the reds and oranges of hillsides with pops of gold and purple.   So their loss will be hard to take.  

On the bright side, another forest-wrecking bug, the spongy caterpillar, once known as gypsy moth caterpillars failed to make an appearance this year after a couple years of these little buggers defoliating big swaths of Vermont forest. 

Leaves usually grow back after the caterpillars leave for the season in mid to late summer, but the returning foliage tends not to be as thick or prone to great fall colors had the trees not been touched. 

This year, a short but intense Arctic outbreak in early February killed many of the overwintering caterpillar eggs. The humid summer encourage a fungus that kills the caterpillars. So I guess there was one small benefit to all that rain through June, July and August. 

In general, it's thought that a bright, dry September with chilly nights and mild days encourages a better fall foliage season. So far this month, the pattern has been mostly wrong for that. We had a midsummer style heat wave between September 3 and 8.  Nights have ranged from sort of on the warm side to downright muggy and toasty.

As of Tuesday, the temperature in Burlington had yet to fall below 50 degrees this month.  These warm conditions appear to be making fall foliage season late. As of this past weekend, many hillsides in Vermont looked as green as they do in July, with no hints of color yet. 

As climate change has made conditions warmer, there has been a general trend toward a later fall foliage season. I remember growing up as a kid that fall foliage season was largely over by October 10.  Now, most years, you can find good color in the warmer valleys during the third week of October. 

Two years ago, there was still pockets of pretty fall colors in the opening days of November. 

Temperatures have turned decidedly cooler over the past couple of days as we inevitably head deeper and deeper into autumn. 

Long range forecasts continue to call for generally above normal temperatures into early October, but above normal doesn't mean the same as it did a few weeks ago. Even these warm spells will feature chilly nights and shorter days that will encourage the leaves to turn color pretty fast between now and mid October. 

Video: Taken over the past few days, it shows fungus afflicting sugar maple leaves and causing them to drop prematurely.  It also includes a view of hillsides a few days ago around Richmond, Vermont still looking very green for mid-September. Click on this link to view, or if you see image below, click on that: