Drought Might Dim Vermont Fall Foliage A Little

The August drought  followed by recent rains have caused
 this oddity at a St. Albans, Vermont dog park.
This small tree thinks it's May with new spring growth. 

Now that it's September and the kiddos are back act school, we're really thinking autumn in Vermont. 

You know, apples, and (ugh) pumpkin spice and fall foliage. Which begs the questions: Will the drought blunt our famous fall colors somewhat this year?  

The answer is: Probably. 

Before you spiral into depression over the prospect, it'll still be pretty this fall. Gorgeous like it always is. But, as if is often the case, there will be flaws in the orange, gold and yellow tapestry of our landscape. 

In a few spots, the color is already lost.

Especially on exposed south facing hillsides with thin, rocky soil, the flash drought that developed in August has already wilted leaves or turned them brown or yellow and those leaves are falling off quickly. Luckily, that's not the majority of trees in Vermont, but there's definitely parts of some hillsides that are already brown. Or at least a dull orange or yellow because of the dry weather. 

Many other trees, while still green have lost some leaves. They'll do that to conserve water during droughts. Also, I've seen leaf scorch. That's caused by the drought, too, along with the extreme heat of mid-August that left the edges of leaves on some trees brown, while the center of the leaves are still green. 

Climate change messes up our foliage season. The flash drought that developed over the past month is a classic example.  That climate change also has alter the autumn schedule. 

Peak fall colors arrive a little later in the season than they used to decades ago. It's possible - but not definite - that this year's drought could actually reverse that later trend and make the peak colors a little earlier than they've been in recent years. That'll be especially true if we have a very cool September. We'll see!

OTHER FOLIAGE PROBLEMS

Springtime and the very start of summer was quite wet, and that encouraged some blights to develop on a few trees. The blight causes leaves on some maples and other plants turn brown or black and fall off now. 

The blight has really affected lilac bushes. You see many of them - including one in front of my house -  have brown leaves that have largely already fallen from the bushes. 

Lilacs aren't known for their colorful fall foliage, so this blight won't affect the autumn scenery much.  But those lilacs are looking pretty uncharacteristically ugly right now.  You'll want to rake up and discard the fallen lilac leaves. And if you get a nice day this winter go in and thin your lilac bushes to improve air circulation.

The good news is that next spring the lilacs should all still leaf out and bloom beautifully like they always do.

The drought might mess with our Vermont autumn
colors a little, but didn't cause this problem. The 
emerald ash borers killed these trees near 
Swanton, Vermont. 

Another odd thing I've seen here in northwestern Vermont over the past couple of days is new spring leaves on some bushes.  The drought made leaves drop from some bushes and trees. We've had some welcome rains recently, and now new leaves are appearing, as it it's May, not September. 

Though this isn't great for the trees and bushes, because it's making them use more reserves, most should survive and leaf out again next spring 

However, one very sad, permanent loss to our fall colors is the ongoing demise of our ash trees.  Ash trees have tended to add some beautiful golds and purples to the autumn color palette, which really have helped to make Vermont's foliage season that much more spectacular.

The emerald ash borer has killed or is killing most of the ash trees in large swaths of the state. In parts of the Champlain Valley, stands of ash trees now look like they do in mid-winter. They're completely dead.

The ash borer hasn't affected all of Vermont yet, so our ash trees in many locations will continue to make their contributions to our lucrative foliage season. But, I'm afraid ash trees will soon go the way of the stately elms we had in the mid-20th century and the huge chestnut trees we had around and before 1900. The end of our valuable ash trees is a terrible loss.

All the rest of our forests are getting ready to go dormant for the season, so renewed rains probably won't help much. That's especially true in southeast Vermont, which largely missed out on beneficial rains this past Friday and Saturday. The dry week we're having ahead of those rains is probably worsening the drought conditions in southern parts of the state. 

It's also beginning to look like a series of weather fronts due Thursday night through Saturday might focus the rain once again in the northwestern half of the state. But since that event is a few days away, that scenario could change. 

Despite the fact it's already September, the weather over the next few weeks might renew some of autumn's brilliance. I've heard quite a few observers note if we have a lot of chilly nights and bright sunny days (with adequate rainfall mixed in) during September, leaves will tend to be brighter and more colorful at the end of the month and in October. 

Fall foliage in Vermont is different every year because the weather is different every year. The best places also change every year. A hillside that was amazing last October might look "meh" this year. Or, a vista that was just OK last year will blow your socks off this foliage season. 

But some things never change. Vermont's forest will put on a big show, it'll look fantastic.  We'll be overrun by tourists. Social media influencers will run amok in and near tourist towns. We'll all get to shuffle through drifts of fallen leaves in crisp autumn air. 

As those beautiful leaves swirl in the chilly autumn winds, us Vermonters will glance up at stunning hillsides in our brave little state, and then turn back to the task of buttoning down everything for another long winter.   

 

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: