Entries by John Poimiroo

Paco Passes

Paco with his fall color spotting companion, Soyoung Kim

Over the years, of the many color spotters who have contributed to this site, Southern California’s Paco had the best nose for fall color.

He was often seen exploring the Eastern Sierra and San Bernardino Mountains with his companion and best friend, Soyoung Kim.

On those scouting trips, he’d often take in the beauty of the scene surrounding him, then finish his sojourn with a taste of Ben & Jerry’s Coffee Buzz, Buzz, Buzz.

We learned today that Paco passed away this autumn on Oct. 7.

While we mourn his passing, we note that he chose the season he loved best to retire from fall color spotting. 

See you next autumn, dude.

Beaver Moon

Wisteria, Beaver Moon (11/27/23) John Poimiroo

While traveling in the 1760s, Captain Jonathan Carver overheard the native-American description of the November full moon as a “Beaver Moon.”

He learned that native people called it that, because it appeared when beavers were finishing their preparations for winter.

“Beaver Moon” was not the only description for the November moon. The Old Farmer’s Almanac explains that indigenous Americans had many names for this moon.

The Dakota and Lakota called it a “Deer Rutting Moon.” The Tlinget described it as a “Digging” or “Scratching Moon” when bear would dig their winter dens, while the Algonquin called it a “Whitefish Moon” as it appeared when fish spawned. The Cree and Assiniboine people described the November moon as a “Frost Moon” and the Anishinaabe used the term “Freezing Moon.”

Let’s just say that whatever you call it, it’s beautiful.

Full Beaver Moon, Granite Bay (11/27/23) John Poimiroo

Courtesy, Almanac.com

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Looking Back at Autumns Past

On Thanksgiving Day, California Fall Color posts its message of thanks and video review of autumn 2023. It will be the twelfth annual “California Fall Color Looks Back” video.

Although CaliforniaFallColor.com went live in 2009, it wasn’t until 2012 that our first video review was posted. In advance of seeing “California Fall Color Looks Back at 2023,” here are videos from autumns past.

Each of the photographs selected for these videos is representative of what happened that autumn, the extent and diversity of fall color seen across the state, and some of the finest photographs taken that year.

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Sierra Foothills on Fire

Sunset, El Dorado Hills (11/19/23) John Poimiroo

In a year with satisfyingly few wildfires, it’s gratifying to report that the Sierra foothills are finally on fire with fall color.

From sunsets blazing across the horizon to oak woodlands glowing with orange embers, the foothills are putting on a colorful show.

Fremont Cottonwood, El Dorado Trail, Camino Heights (11/19/23) John Poimiroo

  • Miner’s Ravine, Roseville (168′) – Near Peak (50 – 75%) Go Now.
  • Folsom Lake State Recreation Area (220′) – Near Peak (50 – 75%) Go Now.
  • El Dorado Hills (768′) – Peak (75 – 100%) GO NOW!
  • El Dorado Trail, Placerville (1,867′) – Peak (75 – 100%) GO NOW!

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Winter Arrives

Agate Bay, Lake Tahoe (11/7/23) John Poimiroo

Winter arrived in the High Sierra yesterday morning.

A dusting of snow frosted spent maple and aspen leaves at North Lake Tahoe. The area was already past peak, though the light snow made it official. You missed it.

On Interstate 80, orange black oak cover the hillsides between Dutch Flat and Alta. Black oak are peaking between 3,000 and 5,000′ throughout the western Sierra. Yosemite is glorious with them.

Peak color has now descended to the Sierra foothills and is filling the Central Valley with warm joy.

  • Lake Tahoe (6,227′) – Past Peak, You Missed It.
  • Dutch Flat (3,144′) – Peak (75-100%) GO NOW!
  • El Dorado Hills (800′) – Peak (75-100%) GO NOW!

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Tahoe’s Terrific

Agate Bay (10/23/23) John Poimiroo

We drove up to Tahoe for the day in order to check on bear damage at our family cabin and found a bright surprise.

Aspen, bigleaf maple, cottonwood and exotics were all aglow with color ringing the lake with a golden necklace.

  • Agate Bay, North Lake Tahoe (6,227′) – Peak (756 – 100%) GO NOW!

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Ready to be Picked

Boa Vista Orchards, Apple Hill, Camino (10/16/23) John Poimiroo

A manly man carried a tiny pumpkin to the register at the Pumpkin Patch at Boa Vista Orchards. Regardless the size of the pumpkin, guys, it’s what you do for your wife and child when they’ve picked the perfect pumpkin.

It’s a ritual that plays out daily during autumn in the Sierra foothills. Each generation of dads (and moms) gets to carry the pumpkin to the register.

Autumn is about such earthly rituals and few places enact them quite as colorfully and tastefully than Camino’s Apple Hill.

There, irresistible apple donuts, apple pies, apple ciders, apple turnovers, apple sauce, apple strudel, and – of course – just-picked apples are on display until the Christmas Tree farms take over. 

Then, another ritual occurs … cutting the Christmas tree.

Goldbud Farms, Apple HIll, Camino (10/16/23) John Poimiroo

  • Apple Hill, Camino (3,133′) – Patchy (10-50%)

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Humboldt Coast Range

Evening Solitude, Liebforth Ranch, Coast Range (10/5/23) John Poimiroo

Bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum) were Just Starting at 3,700′ as we drove highway 36 west from the Central Valley to a reunion at Liebforth Ranch, the family’s 102-year-old homestead in the Charles Mountain drainage.

There’s sporadic color and little of it along the route. Yellow maple leaves are few between, and then with curled, orange-brown edges. They seem healthier the farther you drive west toward moisture.

Forest Glen is a sad relic of what it once was. The town of ten inhabitants used to be surrounded by lush forest. Now it is a graveyard of grey-black skeletons where in August 2020 the Complex Fire raged across more than a million acres of forest and woodland.

The putrid perfume of a pot farm insulted our senses as we neared  Humboldt County. Word among local ranchers is that cultivating marijuana is on hard times due to competition, now that growing is legal in the Emerald Triangle.

It was maddening near Mad River where almost no fall color could be seen in the forest, except orange-red brush which glowed like embers in the woods.

As we rose and dipped along the twisting road we moved over to the Van Duzen River, which was more promising as Dinsmore approached. Patchy color filled a mixed riparian woodland  of orange-brown black cottonwood (Populus balsamifera), white alder (Alnus rhombiflia) and black oak (Quercus kelloggii) in mid afternoon, glowingly backlit with gold, green and buff. Then, the color ended on the way to Bridgeville and down Alderpoint Road to the family homestead. 

I concluded, I wouldn’t recommend CA-36 for fall color. There isn’t much of it in return for the effort.

The land south of Bridgeville along Alderpoint Road is cowboy country. There, honest ranchers tend grass-fed organic beef for Whole Foods and neighbors, miles apart, know each other and what they’re doing just by the sound of dogs barking, cows mooing or a chain saw’s insistent brrrr. Every sound tells a story of what’s happening, as if it were telegraphed.

On our departure from Leibforth Ranch, we returned to Bridgeville and 36, now heading west through Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park where iridescent poison oak vines climb redwood trunks to dizzying heights and glow hot orange-pink in a foggy forest that is speckled with yellow maple leaves.

South of Scotia on U.S. 101, the Avenue of the Giants (CA-254) is Patchy with bigleaf maple at 20% and poison oak near peak at 70%.

It will be a week or two more before the Redwood Highway (US 101) and Humboldt Redwoods State Park are at Peak.

Leaving the redwoods and entering Mendocino wine country, some varieties of grapes (likely white) were peaking bright yellow, though the vineyards were Just Starting with most vineyards green. Just Starting color was also seen at Clear Lake where old walnut orchards are carrying golden color.

  • Forest Glen (2,700′) – Past Peak, You missed it.
  • Mad River (4,845′) – Past Peak, You missed it.
  • Van Duzen River, Dinsmore (2,415′) – 10-50% Patchy
  • Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park (935) – Poison Oak only – 75-100% – Peak, GO NOW! 
  • Avenue of the Giants (CA-254) – 0 – 10% Just Starting
  • Laytonville (1,670′) – 10-50% Patchy
  • Redwood Valley vineyards – 0-10% Just Starting
  • Upper Lake (1,345′) – 0-10% Just Starting
  • CA-20, Clear Lake – 0-10% Just Starting

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Shine On

Almost Full Harvest Moon, Sacramento Valley (9/28/23) John Poimiroo

Friday morning’s Full Corn Moon will be the fourth and final supermoon of 2023.

Because a supermoon’s orbit is flatter than normal, the moon is closer to Earth and appears larger. This phenomenon is exaggerated by the atmosphere, as it rises and sets.

Once in a blue moon, it is full twice in a month, ergo the expression.

CLICK HERE to read how to photograph the Harvest Moon on September 29 (the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox).  The above image was not taken using any of those techniques, but was captured as an abstraction of what will be seen. The following two shots were taken using the techniques.

Full Harvest Moon (9/28/23) John Poimiroo

Full Harvest Moon at Dawn (9/29/23) John Poimiroo

WYSIWYG

San Francisco Chronicle, 9/26/23

Several map makers create maps purporting to forecast fall color. Few do it accurately.

On California Fall Color, what you see is what you get. We only post what has been observed, as reported to us by a network of some 100 volunteer “color spotters.”

That takes time and patience, but it is accurate. You can trust that what we report is peaking, truly is. We only report what is being seen and base any forecast on actual current observations and documented historical record.

Explore Fall, a new autumn-centric website has created a computer model based on “gridded temperature, precipitation and daylight data” that they claim is “accurate within three days, 80% of the time.” However, the map they provided to the San Francisco Chronicle today wasn’t 10% accurate within 30 days. 

Yosemite will not begin showing fall color until the first to second week of October, when a non-native Eastern sugar maple peaks near the Yosemite Chapel (last year, this lone tree peaked on Oct. 4). A week or two later, bigleaf maple and dogwood will begin coloring yellow and pink along the banks of the Merced River and will peak in late October.

Yosemite Valley’s show will culminate in November, when deep-orange black oak flame out among its meadows.

Yet, Explore Fall forecasts Yosemite to peak on Oct 2 and that the Eastern Sierra will be past peak by then. Nonsense.

Such guesses aren’t even close to what really happens. Computer models may be useful in other locales where fall color is unpredictable, but to forecast when and where color will peak anywhere in California, combine what CFC.com is now reporting with past reports (see “Reports By” at right).

The combination of current observation with what happened in prior years provides the most accurate way to find glorious fall color in The Golden State. 

Though we love technology in California, we also know its limitations. Forecasting fall color is  one of them. You need people on the ground to know when and where it will peak.