Some Thoughts About This Year’s Fall Leaf Colors
Today I went out to just north of Blowing Rock where I had great views to the east. As you can see from the photos, the lower elevations are still mostly green. These trees may still change and show good color in the next two weeks, but as you can also see from the other photos, most of the leaves above 3,000’ elevation have already fallen off. Hurricane Helene blew a lot of leaves off, and those that remained began dropping before they turned colorful.
Officially, the entire Parkway is still closed, but a few sections are not gated and there were people driving on them today. I would not encourage you to take the Parkway until NPS personnel declare it open.
This year’s fall leaf color display is, in my opinion, the worst in the ~20 years that I have been doing monitoring. At Grandfather Mt, which usually has great color at this time, even in bad years, nearly all the leaves were gone. There were just a few scattered individual trees with colorful leaves. The landscape is mostly a gray hue from the bare branches and trunks.
Thus, in some respects, you didn’t miss much this year. If you want to see leaves this year, I suggest heading out to the foothills and the parks in those areas (check to see if they are open first!). We could still have color at lower elevations into the first week or so of November. If you do go out, check ahead to see if the area you want to visit is accepting tourists and if the roads and trails are ok. The further east you go, the fewer impacts from the hurricane. Avoid the far western portions of the Appalachians as they were the most severely impacted.