A canopy of color lines the drive through the winding Blue Ridge Parkway, where visitors from across the country have been flocking to "leaf peep" at scenic points like Cone Manor in Blowing Rock, North Carolina.
"It just doesn't even look real," said Warner Gonzalez from Fayetteville. "We’ve been waiting all year to be here, to see what we’re seeing today."
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Fall's crisp fall air and crunchy leaves mark the transition of seasons and nature's annual cue that winter is coming.
Sandy Carlson traveled from Des Moines, Iowa, to see the fall colors.
"We just picked a perfect time to come because the foliage is gorgeous," she said.
Howard Neufeld, a biology professor at Appalachian State University, is widely known by his colloquial name, "Fall Color Guy."
Neufeld has been making predictions about when peak fall colors will arrive for more than 17 years.
"The two things the leaves are responding to are the shortening of the days and drop in fall temperatures," Neufeld said. "Some trees respond more to day length and others to temperature."
Since 1970, the fall season has warmed in across the U.S. by 2.4°F on average, according to a Climate Central analysis.
Warmer weather into fall months can "trick" some trees into producing chlorophyll longer, keeping them green later into the season and making them susceptible to damage if there is a sudden frost.
Others that rely more on daylight changes can drop earlier in the season, leaving bare skeletons across the landscape when other trees are in peak color.
"The peak is extended because of warming," said Neufeld. "It kind of dilutes the color because when you have bare trees and color, the intensity of the color in the landscape isn’t quite the same as if they were coming up at the same time."
Color has been arriving later in some of the country’s most vibrant fall foliage hot spots, including western North Carolina.
Red maple leaf colors arrive more than a month later than they did in the 19th century, according to a 2021 study.
Warming – across all seasons – impacts the timing of leaves changing, and makes Neufeld’s job of predicting peak season harder each year.
"I gives me some anxiety now," he said. "I get emails from brides in May wanting to know when peak fall color will be and I'm like 'don't put that one me!'"
During his first decade of predictions, peak colors almost always landed between Oct. 10-20.
Warm temperatures in early October pushed this year's peak seven to 10 days late in many areas.
"From 2017 to the present, it's all over the place," Neufeld said. "So, the variability in timing is getting greater than it was in past years that may be due to incipient climate change."
Climate-related delays of fall colors can disrupt the tree’s cycle of growth and rest, which can have an impact on where they can live, how well they grow, and if they are storing carbon at the same rate.
Earlier spring warming that has an impact on trees leafing out sooner can also make leaves fall sooner.
Aside from temperature, other climate factors including pollution, rain – or lack of it – and insect infestations also play a role.
"Some of those factors can also make fall colors less vibrant," Neufeld said.
The orange and yellow hues are actually present year-round, but when trees stop producing green chlorophyll, the colors underneath are revealed.
In fall, some trees produce a new red pigment called anthocyanin, the same pigment that give roses and strawberries their crimson color.
"If it's warm they burn up the sugars doing respiration, so there aren’t as many to make anthocyanins and you get duller red colors," Neufeld said.
It turns out studying fall colors can have its own spectrum.
"As with everything in science it’s not black or white, its gray and more complicated than we initially thought."