Blue Ridge Parkway Leads to Peaks of Fall Leaf Color

Nothing could be finer than fall leaf viewing on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina.

The Asheville Citizen-Times talked to three mountain leaf color experts in August and decided that:

A great way to follow the color flow is along the Blue Ridge Parkway, which follows the Southern Appalachians from Virginia down through North Carolina and Asheville for 469 miles, ending in Cherokee at the entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where mountains also soar above 5,000 feet.

Colors will start in the Mount Mitchell, Craggy Gardens and Graveyard Fields areas, which all sit above 5,000 feet, in early October. Then they’ll dip down to about 4,000 feet around Grandfather Mountain, and the 3,000+ feet area of Boone, Linville Falls and Crabtree Meadows [featuring Crabtree Falls] in mid-October.”

We’d add the Parkway’s Mount Pisgah Recreation Area, which also sits at about 5,000 feet elevation, to the list of early-October leaf viewing destinations. The Pisgah Inn’s large observation platform, which is open to the public adjacent to the restaurant and bar, overlooks a sweeping valley extending from the Hendersonville area through Brevard and Toxaway.

> See our Blue Ridge Parkway directory for information about seven Parkway recreation areas in North Carolina and the Destination Visitors Center above Asheville.

In the 3,000-feet Boone area mid-October, don’t overlook Wiseman’s View, which is just off the Parkway near Linville Falls and overlooks Linville Gorge.

North Carolina’s “Fall Color Guy,” Howard Neufeld, professor of plant eco-physiology at Appalachian State University in Boone, produced the map below charting the movement of fall color from the highest to lower peaks. He also posts a mostly weekly fall color report.

Map conceived by Howard Neufeld and Michael Denslow. Map Constructed by Michael Denslow

On his Fall Color Guy Facebook page, Neufield says Hurricane Florence did little damage along the Blue Ridge last weekend with average maximum wind gusts around 40 mph. “(T)he majority of the leaves are still up, and as I mentioned in several posts, it was fortunate that the storm came this early in the fall leaf color season, as otherwise more leaves would have come off.”

Neufield and his colleagues told the Citizen-Times that the brilliance of fall leaf colors is determined by September weather.

“Fall colors are very dependent on the weather,” Neufield said. “September is the most crucial month. If we start to get a cool down, with sunny days and cool nights, those are the best conditions for fall color.”

“For good leaf color, you want regular rainfall in summer and the growing season and into fall, you want it to be drier, and temperatures that are cooler and crisp. Nothing is indicating that that won’t happen,” Extension Service climatologist Rebecca Ward said in the August 25 report.

“Assuming that it stays warm, we might not get that cold nighttime temperature that we usually get until a few days later in October,” Beverly Collins, a biology professor and fall foliage forecaster at Western Carolina University said. “I think the colors will be normal to somewhat muted, because the plants are growing faster. They’re not accumulating more of these compounds, these pigments, that make them bright. It’s not true that wet weather washes out the color, it’s just that they’re growing fast.”

Asheville weather through mid-September has been warmer than average, AccuWeather records show. Florence, of course, has made it a rainy September statistically throughout North Carolina.