New England
New England Fall Foliage | 2019 Forecast
Planning a New England autumn adventure? Our forecaster predicts long-lasting color with an emphasis on softer oranges and yellows. Read on for the full New England fall foliage 2019 forecast.
By Jim Salge|Aug 26 2019|
New England's fall foliage sets the backdrop for a full cultural experience.
Credit: Jim Salge
New England’s fall foliage sets the backdrop for a full cultural experience.
Credit: Jim SalgeCredit: Jim Salge Visitors from all over the world travel to New England each year to experience the show and share in the simplest of time-honored traditions: admiring the fall leaves. The beautiful landscape also serves as a backdrop to a one-of-a-kind cultural experience, as fairs, pumpkin festivals, cider doughnut spots, and road trips encourage families to get outside and communities to come together. It’s fortunate that our average climate conditions produce spectacular fall colors, and while there can be significant variability in the timing, intensity, duration, and hue, the show rarely disappoints. To get an idea of how the 2019 season might take shape, we’ll look into the recent past to gauge the health of the leaves that now make up the forest canopy, as well as examine long-range weather forecasts to understand how the foliage will change this fall.
New England’s Fall Foliage Is Consistently A Spectacular Show
Credit: Jim SalgeCredit: Jim Salge
New England Fall Foliage 2019 | Weather Influences
A Long Winter
The 2018 New England fall foliage display arrived late, and many leaves were still on the trees when early snows arrived. Wildcat Resort in the White Mountains opened in October for its earliest skiing ever, and the Crown of Maine saw its snowpack set in for good by early November. In southern New England, oak leaves fell on deep snow from a nor’easter the week of Thanksgiving. Early storms like these can bring damage to the forests, but overall the trees seemed to have weathered them well.
April 1 – Deep Snowpack Covered Northern New England Well Into Spring This Year
Credit: NOAA NOHRSCCredit: NOAA NOHRSC The remainder of winter was fairly consistent in its stormtrack, with a distinct line forming across New England between epic winter and a sloppy, icy mess. Northern zones never experienced a thaw all season, and a deep, record-setting snowpack blanketed the forests. Caribou, Maine, had snow on the ground for 163 straight days, a week longer than any other winter in recorded history. In the White Mountains of New Hampshire and the Green Mountains of Vermont, snow lingered on trails into May, and trees on hillsides didn’t start budding out until June, significantly later than historical averages. Farther south, though, snowpack was abnormally thin, as storms that began as snow ended as rain. (Here in southern New Hampshire, my kids were actually able to ice skate on our lawn on five different weekends.) As very cold air moved in between storms, the uninsulated ground froze deeply — but it thawed quickly in the spring. When a last cold snap moved through in March, trees and shrubs were particularly vulnerable. Suburban landscapes were hit the hardest, with damage ranging from loss of branches to dormancy and even death in young oaks and maples and, notably, old rhododendrons.
A Wet Spring
Spring was consistently wet and cool across New England. Portland, Maine, saw rainfall on 25 days between April 1 and May 15, the most ever during that period. The cool, cloudy weather delayed leaf-out in southern New England even as lingering snowpack was doing the same in northern New England.
June 1 – The Hillsides Of The White Mountains Are Still Bare
Credit: Jim Salge
Live near Bristol UK but have been lucky enough to visit Canada and see the Maples but more recently visited Vermont and other wonderful places in New England!
If I am going to Waterberry Vermont on September 15 and 16, will that be too soon to see vibrant colors in Stowe?
We are planning to take a trip into NE to see the leaves when we leave our DC vacation on October 27. We were thinking thru the Berkshires – Sturbridge, Lennox, Williamstown, Woodstock VT etc. Do you think we will still see some fall colors so late?
It’s unlikely there’ll be any color left by then.
Darn! Was hoping to see the bold reds this year. Will the soft orange hues be all throughout New England? Are there some areas that might have more red colors?
Thank you
Pray for cool nights and sunny days! This promotes the sugar formation in the leaves that give them the red and purple hues. But beware of early frost, as all bets are off for the reds and it will also have a negative effect of leaves staying on the trees long enough to produce even the yellow and orange.
We are planning a New England vacation . I would like to know places to stay in Stowe, Vermont , and places in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire to see ??
Check out TripAdvisor’s Accommodations and Things To Do sections.
How will Dorian affect colors in Maine and along the coast generally?
Hi Jim, Thanks for nice article. Do you know the place where the 1st pic in this article is taken. I really need to visit this place 🙂