A friend and I were making plans for her visit up north for the turning of the leaves. When’s peak color going to be? she asked.
If you live up here, you know that’s hard to say. Timing is affected by things that happened in the past, like the amount of rain during the summer, and things that will happen in the future, like the number of sunny clear days and wind speeds in the fall.
As they say in the investment world, past performance is no guarantee of future results.
But there are a lot of tourism dollars riding on this information, so considerable effort goes into providing predictions. One web site I like is smokymountains.com/fall-foliage-map
It shows a map of the entire country. You pick the dates you’re interested in and as you move the slider, the map shows the expected intensity of the color right down to the county level.
Their prediction for the IPR broadcast area is that near-peak color will be about October 7th , with peak about October 14th.
Another thing I like about this model is it incorporates citizen science. You can hop on the website and report the state of the color near you and even upload a photo.
This got me wondering: what’s the scientific name for the leaf color change?
Sadly, it’s Leaf Senescence. As in senile. No way does that capture the exuberance of color of the fall leaf change.
Instead, senescence evokes—for me—the image of a shriveled brown leaf. And, the term isn’t exclusive to leaves. You might even find it in your medical record some day.
The best alternative I’ve come up with is The Annual Explosion of Chromaticity. Do you think it will catch on?