DAYTON — Fall has officially arrived although it’s still looking like summer since the leaves haven’t quite started changing yet. What do we need weather-wise, in order to have a year with vibrant yellows, oranges, and reds? And could this year be a boom or bust for leaf peeping?
There are three main things we need in order to have nice fall foliage during peak times at the end of October. We need a warm and wet spring, a seasonable summer, and a stretch of warm, sunny fall days with cool nights. Spring meaning all of March, April, and May. Summer meaning June, July, and August. And fall, so far, meaning September 1 to now.
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I looked back at the records for our meteorological spring season and found that our average high temperature across the season ran almost 3 degrees above average! Talk about a warm season for sure. And rainfall? Way above average too with over 2.5 inches above what’s expected in the season. So check mark for the first category!
Secondly, let’s look at our summer. We wanted it to be seasonable and average. Well, our average high over the whole season was only 1 degree above average and summer started extremely wet then dried out through August. It balanced out to rainfall totals being less than an inch above average. Bottom line, this summer was maybe the closest we could have gotten to seasonable. Check mark for the second category!
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Lastly, what about our fall season so far? We want warm, sunny days and cool but not freezing nights. Everything also checks out. We all know it has been extremely dry and sunny this fall so far, and high temperatures across the month have only been 1 degree above average. I could consider that warm without being too hot! And the nights, especially at the start of September, have been well below average as a whole. Three degrees below average in fact! So really we can check off all three boxes! This season could be a nice vibrant year for fall colors! Let’s just hope we don’t have an early freeze which could limit the colors.
How does the drought that we’ve had affect fall foliage though? According to the USDA, a later summer drought may just delay peak color timing later in the year. So we will see!
