At about the same time every year, when huge Halloween props greet you at every store and every drink smells like pumpkin spice, SmokyMountains.com rolls out their Fall Foliage Prediction Map. It's almost all green right now, but you can move the slider below to see where the brightest colors will be for each week through November 17th. The map shown above is for the week of October 20th. If you want to plan a trip to see the autumn colors, this map is intended to help you decide what days to reserve accommodations. It's also handy to plan a photography day trip or invite your friends from the desert or the tropics to visit.
The map uses historical data, weather trends and forecasts, user observations, and the kind of trees in each area to predict when and how the cooling temperatures will affect leaf color each week ahead. Conditions that are cooler and drier than normal in my corner of Kentucky means that leaves will turn earlier and be brighter than average. We should have some really beautiful mountains for a month or more. And, like every year, I will see those mountains and think about making a quilt in those colors, but I never do. -via Laughing Squid
In October or so I visited Rome, Georgia - the farthest north I had ever been in fall.
That was the first time in my 18 years of life when I saw massive numbers of trees changing color. It was much better than the pictures I had seen.
(About two years later there was a hard freeze. The overnight temps would get below freezing! Those of us in the dorm from south Florida stayed up late, excitedly calling time&temp - it was the olden days - so we could go outside and experience 32℉ and colder. We even made left water outside to see if it would freeze.)