Fall Foliage In NY: See When Leaves Peak In 2019

NEW YORK – As summer days wane and the brutality of winter approaches, New Yorkers are gifted a few weeks of comfortable temperatures and natural beauty that many consider the most amazing time of year – but blink and you'll miss it.

Central Park, along with New York City's many other parks, are stunning in the fall. But if you're planning to travel further afield to delight in the changing foliage, now is the time to plan it.

To help you choose when to travel to see the leaves at their most vibrant, the Smoky Mountain National Park has designed a Fall Foliage Prediction Map.

In New York City, it shows the colors start to change around Sept. 21, with peak foliage expected around Oct. 19. But if you venture north, the changes come earlier.

Pinpoint the best time to visit by viewing the map below.

"The predictive fall leaf map helps potential travelers, photographers and leaf peepers determine the precise future date that the leaves will peak in each area of the continental United States. By utilizing the date selector at the bottom of the map, the user can visually understand how fall will progress over a region,” data scientist Wes Melton, the website’s chief technical officer, said in a statement.

“We believe this interactive tool will enable travelers to take more meaningful fall vacations, capture beautiful fall photos and enjoy the natural beauty of autumn."

The major factors that determine the fall foliage peak are sunlight, precipitation, soil moisture and temperature.

“Nothing is 100 percent accurate,” David Angotti, the cofounder of the website, told Patch, but the tool “gets pretty darned close.”

Of course, “we can have a brilliant fall, and Mother Nature can come in with a wind storm and rip those leaves off in minutes,” Angotti said.

The website refines its predictive algorithm every year, using hundreds of thousands of data points from private and government sources, including historical and forecasted temperatures and precipitation data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, historical leaf peak trends and peak observation trends.

New maps are created from scratch every year using new data that reflects the drastic year-to-year changes, and the prediction becomes more accurate as the foliage peak nears, Melton said.

What Causes The Different Colors?

You probably remember from science class that the color change all starts with photosynthesis. Leaves constantly churn out chlorophyll — a key component in a plant’s ability to turn sunlight into the glucose it needs to stay healthy — from spring through early fall. Those cells saturate the leaves, making them appear green to the human eye.

But leaves aren’t green at all. Autumn is the time for leaves’ big reveal: their true color, unveiled as chlorophyll production grinds to a halt. The colors in fall’s breathtaking tapestry are influenced by other compounds, according to the national park’s website.

Beta carotene, the same pigment that makes carrots orange, reflects the yellow and red light from the sun and gives leaves an orange hue.

The production of anthocyanin, which gives leaves their vivid red color, ramps up in the fall, protecting and prolonging the leaf’s life on a tree throughout autumn.

Yellows are produced by flavonol, which is part of the flavonoid protein family. It’s always present in leaves, but doesn’t show itself until chlorophyll production begins to slow.