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Forecasters say if the warm weather persists and the rain stays away, fall could arrive with a dynamic cluster of colors this year.
Sabrina Jauernic, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Gaylord said the yellow, red and orange color we tend to see in the fall is always present in leaves. The brilliance of their fall pigment depends on total rainfall and mild temperatures.
“There are some hints that we could see a slightly warmer-than-normal autumn. The Climate Prediction Center has a 40 to 50% chance of having warmer than normal temperatures. There is no real clear signal for the amount of precipitation we may get though,” Jauernic said.
Leaves get their green color from chlorophyll — it aids in the process of photosynthesis along with sunlight, glucose and water.
When the length of daylight gets shorter, leaves are unable to make as much chlorophyll. This is why each autumn the leaves will, at some point, lose their green color no matter the temperature or precipitation. The lower chlorophyll concentrations allows the red, orange, and yellow pigments to shine through.
“These other colors are always in the leaf, just usually masked out by the amount of green. Brilliant red colors are typically only produced by certain trees like some maples and oaks,” Jauernic said.
“Yellow and orange colors are usually fairly consistent from year to year, since they are much less affected by changing weather. Although, their brilliance may be muted by too much rain for too long of a time period,” she added.
Brown color shows last after all other colors have faded away. Red is the color that varies the most based on weather conditions.
“Once we’re in early autumn, a series of warm sunny days and cool, but not freezing nights, produce the best reds. Under these conditions lots of sugars are produced in the leaf during the day, and cooler temperatures prevent them from draining out at night. If we get down to freezing, the leaf stem will get too brittle to continue supporting the leaf,” Jauernic said.
Factors including a very late spring or severe summer drought can delay the onset of fall colors. Severe extended droughts through the summer can cause some leaves to prematurely fall off the tree before colors have a chance to turn.
“The best conditions for fall leaf color are a moist growing season, followed by warm and dry autumn days with cool to mild overnight temperatures. Too much fall rain will tend to mute the color saturation or brilliance, thanks to a lack of sunlight to make food/glucose late in the season. If we have many storms with gusty winds this could also make leaves fall off prematurely,” Jauernic said.
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