Feel-good fall foliage report
New England’s fall foliage forecast is looking so fine it’s enough to make a maple leaf blush.
For the first time in several years, little has conspired against a truly glorious autumn. There’s no more drought, the summer has been mild and the leaves — largely spared by marauding gypsy moth caterpillars — look healthy.
“It’s the most optimistic forecast I’ve had in a couple of years,” said Jim Salge, who tracks the region’s annual autumn pageant for
Yankee magazine.
A few recent autumns were disappointing because they were preceded by too much or too little summer rainfall, muting the colors. Last fall was a bust in parts of eastern Massachusetts and Connecticut after hungry caterpillars defoliated hundreds of thousands of acres of already droughtstricken woodlands.
But this year, the stage is set for a particularly “strong and vibrant” display. Salge didn’t study New York, New Jersey or other corners of the Northeast, but botanists say those states theoretically should be in for a nice show, too, since they tend to experience similar weather.
Snowfall and snowmelt replenished drought-parched forests during winter and early spring.