Is it Fall, Yet?

Here in the Northeast, we seem to have two seasons: summer and winter – hot and cold. Where’s fall? Spring was cold, summer hot, long. Fall? Late.

I’ve always noticed that summers with little rain seem to have the best fall color. We had tons of rain this year, in fact, we had over 20 inches in August alone. Climate change? You bet. We seem to get more rain every year. Thankfully, it isn’t all at once (even last August). We did have a little bit of flooding on October 11.

There were two tornado warnings this year. The first one hit and took down three trees across the road — thankfully, none, here.

Hurricanes worse each year. Fires, too. Flooding in Texas, drought elsewhere. Over one hundred degrees in England? The five hottest years on record all happened since 2010. It’s the new normal.

The peak moment of autumn color for us is usually the second week in October. Most of the trees this year are still green today, October 25. I think most are going to go from green to brown to nothing. The columnar sugar maples (left), Acer saccharum ‘Newton Sentry’, finally got a little color. They are over twenty feet tall and less than three feet wide at around thirty-five years.

How’s the climate by you? Have you noticed some weather anomalies?