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2020 Fall Foliage Thread


wxmanmitch
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Still plenty of leaves left here as we avoided the heaviest rain and worst winds.  I'm thinking Columbus day October 10-12 may end up being peak this year around here whereas in a normal year we are more like October 18- 20.  I feel as though the warm-up may have helped to decelerate the process a bit here, after color started to pop rapidly when we had our first frost and freeze.  

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On 9/30/2020 at 9:27 PM, PhineasC said:

That's sad, dude.

I saw the colors last year in the Whites, so it's not the end of the world. I have visitors coming up in a week so that's the only reason I cared (and their timing was unrelated to fall colors). But they're not super invested because they aren't weenies, and they'd be just fine staying local. The Blackstone valley has some nice views for fall colors and I'm thinking we'll be near peak.

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On 10/1/2020 at 4:51 PM, MarkO said:

Peaked here last weekend, about 2 weeks earlier than normal. It IS kinda sad. I feel bad for the folks who booked Columbus Day weekend. It might as well be November.

Columbus Day weekend often seems to late... I always tell people early October... but also on Columbus Day even if people miss peak they are often seeing what we are seeing now.  Still some color, not great, lots of leaf drop and only oranges left really... but its still something for them to look at.  By Columbus Day this year it literally will be completely gone, November essentially like you said.

 

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A decent crowd of leaf watchers out in the Northern Whites today. Some minor traffic in and out of Gorham. Mostly Massholes with some CT and RI mixed in. Huge backup to get on the dreaded Mt. Washington Auto Road. Bunch of crazies, if you ask me. LOL

They missed peak color. Last weekend was way better than this weekend.

 

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21 hours ago, PhineasC said:

A decent crowd of leaf watchers out in the Northern Whites today. Some minor traffic in and out of Gorham. Mostly Massholes with some CT and RI mixed in. Huge backup to get on the dreaded Mt. Washington Auto Road. Bunch of crazies, if you ask me. LOL

They missed peak color. Last weekend was way better than this weekend.

 

lol, same thing over this way.

This looks like a real relaxing way to enjoy the mountains.  Everyone leaves the city and then comes to wait in traffic on the Auto Roads, the Kang, RT 100 here, etc.  The city traffic comes to the mountains.  And they missed the foliage by like a week.

TollRoad_Oct4.jpg.ec4139eeb6c383de09ce8285ed666169.jpg

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Just now, mreaves said:

Definitely worth the drive in the off season. 

I've only done it once, but it was awesome even in the summer.  Such a cool road.

I also am trying to find the photo, but I saw a drone image of the Kang today that looked like several miles of just bumper to bumper in both directions.  A sea of red brake lights.

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9 hours ago, backedgeapproaching said:

I've never even been on the Kanc, but always here stories about the backups around peak foliage..no chance I would go near that on a weekend in early Oct..

 

We tried it and turned around. We even went past exit 32, took 33, and went back south to take 32 south to avoid the backup on the off ramp going north. It was about an hour to get to Loon and then 90 mins to get to the point where we turned around just shy of the hairpin. Total waste of time. 

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11 hours ago, backedgeapproaching said:

I've never even been on the Kanc, but always here stories about the backups around peak foliage..no chance I would go near that on a weekend in early Oct..

 

  About 30 years ago when we lived in Gardiner, we were headed to my dad's place in Woodsville, NH on the Saturday of the holiday weekend and as usual we rode the Kanc westbound and would drive HIE-Gorham-Bethel coming home.  Many vehicles but no issues until we were about 1/2 mile west of the hairpin.  From there it was 2 hours (4-6 PM) to get the 7 miles into Lincoln.  The first hour we played leapfrog with 3 college-age ladies who were on foot, then "sped" past them at 5 mph.  We had no set time to get to dad's, it was in the 70s and colors were late that year and still beautiful, so we put the 5-speed Cavalier in neutral, opened the windows and coasted.   Never saw any particular cause for the jam, but maybe the Loon leafpeeper lift had closed and traffic out of that place overloaded the highway.  No such issues thru Kinsman's Notch, which was just as pretty.

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17 hours ago, powderfreak said:

lol, same thing over this way.

This looks like a real relaxing way to enjoy the mountains.  Everyone leaves the city and then comes to wait in traffic on the Auto Roads, the Kang, RT 100 here, etc.  The city traffic comes to the mountains.  And they missed the foliage by like a week.

 

Was up at the camp this weekend....its weird.  The foliage is definitely gone by, but there's still a lot of green mixed in.  It's like the drought made half the tree's stressed so they turned early, but the other half that aren't stressed are going about like normal.  Never seen it like that. 

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5 minutes ago, Whineminster said:

Was up at the camp this weekend....its weird.  The foliage is definitely gone by, but there's still a lot of green mixed in.  It's like the drought made half the tree's stressed so they turned early, but the other half that aren't stressed are going about like normal.  Never seen it like that. 

I noticed something I thought was weird related to that. I cut down a few healthy-looking trees with leaves on them in August, and within an hour or two of coming down their leaves had shriveled up and looked like totally dry crap. As if they were barely alive before and as soon as the tree fell they all died immediately. I don't recall ever seeing that happen after felling a healthy tree down south. Maybe not drought related, but it was strange.

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1 hour ago, Whineminster said:

Was up at the camp this weekend....its weird.  The foliage is definitely gone by, but there's still a lot of green mixed in.  It's like the drought made half the tree's stressed so they turned early, but the other half that aren't stressed are going about like normal.  Never seen it like that. 

I don’t know if it’s the “drought” (we really only had a very dry 3 week period) but I bet it was several days of record cold temps that got them going.  To me it all happened at once, the valleys went at the same time as the higher elevations when normally it’s a gradual process from high to low.

The maples went to straight fire red almost immediately (best reds I can remember) and the birches turned bright yellow.  There is still a species of tree out there with light green leaves still, but it’s a minority species.

We do often have two peaks almost, but the best variety of color was definitely when the maples and the birches flipped to bright red and yellow almost within 72 hours of that brutal cold shot for the time of year.

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2 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

I don’t know if it’s the “drought” (we really only had a very dry 3 week period) but I bet it was several days of record cold temps that got them going.  To me it all happened at once, the valleys went at the same time as the higher elevations when normally it’s a gradual process from high to low.

The maples went to straight fire red almost immediately (best reds I can remember) and the birches turned bright yellow.  There is still a species of tree out there with light green leaves still, but it’s a minority species.

We do often have two peaks almost, but the best variety of color was definitely when the maples and the birches flipped to bright red and yellow almost within 72 hours of that brutal cold shot for the time of year.

Quaking aspen is usually the last to change, among trees that actually become colorful.  There was enough around Fort Kent, often in abandoned farmland, to give us a 2nd look - yellow/orange/red in late Sept and all yellow about 10 days later.

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