Sunday, September 14, 2003

By Wendy Lin, Newsday

The fall foliage will be spectacular this year, said a longtime professional New England leaf watcher.

It is consolation for the relentless wet weather that has ruined many a beach weekend and summer picnic. "All the rain that made such miserable vacations also made really big leaves," said Mel Allen, editor of Yankee magazine. "When those leaves change color, it's going to make a terrific fall foliage season."

Warm, sunny days and cool nights set the cycle in motion, causing the trees to stop producing chlorophyll and bringing out the carotene colors of the leaves. Different species of trees have different-colored leaves. Sugar maples and American beech trees usually have yellow and orange leaves, for example, while dogwoods, sumacs and maples have red leaves. Oak trees usually produce brown leaves.

Allen, who lives in Durham, N.H., has been watching leaves for Yankee magazine for 24 years. He talks to foresters, leaf watchers (amateurs who volunteer to monitor their trees for tourism bureaus), weather forecasters, innkeepers and tourists about foliage every year. "Fall foliage is one of our franchises," he said. "Our seasons define our region, and among those seasons, none is more important to the New England identity than fall foliage."

Yankee Magazine's foliage guide, YankeeFoliage.com, is tailored to New England. The site also includes a fairly active Foliage Forum where visitors can post questions or peruse discussions for insider advice.

Much attention is paid to pinpointing the "peak" of the foliage season. According to Allen, that should be about the same this year, with some leaves starting to change in northern climates and at higher elevations as early as Sept. 15, while the southern and the lower areas will be reaching the height of their colors during the first two weeks of October.

But timing the peak, Allen said, is beside the point. The art of leaf watching is not about trying to figure out the precise moment when the maximum number of leaves have changed color and are still clinging to their branches. Leaf watching is about the entire weeks-long process, from the first yellow leaf popping out of a lush green tree to the mounds of crispy leaves that lie under bare branches.

"Finding peak color is like reducing the entire season to a sound bite," Allen said. "I tell people to look at foliage as a continuum of color. Don't think of it as a single day."

As the time for leaf watching nears, tourism offices turn on their fall foliage hot lines for up-to-the-minute reports on the progress of the leaves. Internet Web sites have been dedicated to leaf reports, some even using Web cams to show the minute-by-minute change in select areas throughout the Northeast.

Some of the Web sites are:

www.vermontfallfoliage.com.

www.iloveny.com.

www.vermontvacation.com.

www.foliagevermont.com.

www.mainefoliage.com.

www.nh.com.

www.foliagenetwork.com.

www.visitnh.gov/foliagereports.html.

www.travelnotes.org/travel.

www.weirsonline.com/foliage cam1.

www.state.me.us/doc/foliage.

www.fallinpa.com.

www.fs.fed.us/news/fallcolors (or phone the USDA Forest Service at 1-800-354-4595).

Other Web sites range further. The Miracle of Fall (www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/fallcolor), produced by the University of Illinois Extension, provides dozens of links to foliage updates, driving and hiking tips, Web cams with live panoramic views of foliage, and places to go for activities like apple and pumpkin picking.

Some sites, such as Weather.com, include maps showing the normal peak times for fall color across the nation, and can provide decent guidance for timing a trip. Since nature's schedule is fluid, though, it also makes sense to rely on the Miracle of Fall to find more immediate updates.

One of the best foliage timing sites, the Foliage Network (www.foliagenetwork.com) is missing from the Miracle of Fall. Based in Niskayuna, N.Y., the Foliage Network provides color-coded maps for the Northeast, Southeast and Midwest, using data from roughly 500 "spotters" affiliated with the site. The information is updated twice weekly and includes text descriptions of both color change and "leaf drop."

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