Will Calif Fall Color Continue?

Rose Hips, Napa Valley, 2009 (John Poimiroo)

Rose Hips, Napa Valley (10/17/09)

Amazing, but with a month to go before the official start of autumn, a few of the exotic ornamental trees in our area (Sierra Foothills, 800 ft. elev.) have begun showing signs of change.  Along local boulevards, some branches on Chinese pistache have turned brown.  Now that’s probably something peculiar to those trees, as everything else remains green on what has been an otherwise mild summer for California, after a wet winter.

California Fall Color may fall sooner than the leaves, however.  This blog was begun with financial support from a few destinations in California that experience spectacular fall color.  In order to be fully representative of our name, however, we included reports from across California at no cost to other destinations.  However, this summer we learned that the funding that supported California Fall Color isn’t available as in past years or will be used for other purposes, so funding to support weekly reporting here has been lost.

Without financial support, it is not possible to allocate the time needed to collect and process weekly submitted reports, as well as do my own reporting.  Part of the reason is California’s long fall color season (longest, most varied and perhaps the most spectacular in the USA).  It begins in early September, when color begins to show at the highest elevations of the Eastern Sierra and descends by elevation through the end of November.

I plan to post occasional reports, but only when received by color spotters.  I won’t be sending weekly fall color reports to TV weather reporters, newspapers, blogs and social media as in the past few years, mostly because the basic funding to do so isn’t there, so I apologize to those media who’ve come to depend on California Fall Color for accurate and regularly posted reports and photographs.

If you’re a color spotter or want to be, email reports and photos to us.  What we need is a detailed a description of what you saw: type of foliage, colors seen, where seen and degree of change (your assessment of what percentage of total foliage has turned color: 0-15%, 15-30%, 30-50%, 50-75%, 75-100% or Past Peak.  Peaking color is above 50%.  This is the same scale used by The Weather Channel).

Share what you see and and let’s all look forward to a colorful autumn.

Photo Credit: © 2009, John Poimiroo