When will the leaves start to turn colors in RI? We rounded up the predictions

Katie Landeck, Providence Journal
·4 min read

When the calendar turns to September, people start to think about the turning of the seasons and, more specifically, the turning of the foliage.

Is it going to be a good year? Will the colors be vivid reds, yellows and oranges or will they have a brown tinge to them? And perhaps most importantly (particularly if you’re planning a trip to see foliage), when will the leaves peak?

Controlled mostly by weather, the fall foliage season can be forecasted if you know what to look for. Here’s what people are saying to expect from 2023.

Blackstone Valley Tourism Council President Bob Billington says Route 102, from North Smithfield to North Kingstown, offers lots of views of fall’s palette. A cemetery on Green Street, just outside of Slatersville village in North Smithfield, is alight in fall color.
Blackstone Valley Tourism Council President Bob Billington says Route 102, from North Smithfield to North Kingstown, offers lots of views of fall’s palette. A cemetery on Green Street, just outside of Slatersville village in North Smithfield, is alight in fall color.

The science: Why do leaves change color in the fall and what influences it?

As daylight lessens and deciduous trees come to the end of the growing season, the plants have adapted to pull the nutrients they’ve been storing into their leaves, which includes nitrogen and phosphorus, back into the twigs and barks, University of Rhode Island botany Prof. Keith Killingbeck said.

“Instead of having leaves just drop before winter and the plant would lose all those nutrients, they pull a lot of that back,” Killingbeck said. “If they didn’t conserve those nutrients, they'd have to take up a lot more out of the soil and would expend a lot more energy doing that.”

As the trees break down photosynthetic compounds in the leaves and pull back those nutrients, other colors that have been masked by the leave’s chlorophyll start to become visible.

“If the trees are healthy, bright sunny days - they can be cold - but bright sunny days and cold night make for the best conditions for the trees to produce the most vivid colors," Killingbeck said. If the nights are warm, the trees have to work harder and will use some of the compounds that make for bright colors, resulting in a more diluted foliage season.

Drought years are another thing that can harm colors, by creating browner foliage; and a very wet fall can also impact the foliage as the old leaves have “microscopic cracks and rain can actually leach some of the nutrients and some of the compounds and that can diminish color to some extent,” Killingbeck said.

Old Farmer’s Almanac 2023 fall foliage predictions

The Blackstone Valley Fall Foliage Train Ride travels through miles of colorful New England forest on its Oct. 22 journey from Woonsocket to Putnam, Connecticut, and back again.
The Blackstone Valley Fall Foliage Train Ride travels through miles of colorful New England forest on its Oct. 22 journey from Woonsocket to Putnam, Connecticut, and back again.

The Old Farmer's Almanac, which has been predicting long-range weather outlooks annually since 1792, has made its 2023 predictions for when peak fall foliage will hit in every state.

In Rhode Island, they’re predicting peak season will be Oct. 12 through 28.

It did not recommend places for viewing leaves in Rhode Island, but did recommend making a trip to the Kancamagus Highway in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the Connecticut River Valley in southeastern Connecticut, Green Mountain Byway in Vermont, the Berkshires in Massachusetts and Acadia National Park in Maine.

Farmers' Almanac 2023 fall foliage predictions

Like the Old Farmer's Almanac, the Farmers' Almanac is also predicting Oct. 12 through 28 will be peak for fall foliage in Rhode Island.

By state: Where are the best fall colors? Map out best dates and locations for 2023 leaf-peeping

Yankee Magazine fall foliage 2023 predictions

If you’re looking for peak foliage dates, Yankee magazine always has a great guide with its New England fall foliage forecast.
If you’re looking for peak foliage dates, Yankee magazine always has a great guide with its New England fall foliage forecast.

In the 2023 fall foliage forecast prepared by Jim Salge for Yankee magazine, Salge looked at everything from drought to bugs to the El Nina and La Nina weather patterns to make his predictions. It's by far the most thorough forecast.

Here are the highlights of his predictions:

  • The waterlogged soil will lead to leaves starting to turn early, making for a long foliage season.

  • The waterlogged conditions and forecasts of continued warm wet weather will lead to a more pastel palette of foliage colors this season.

  • With the warm weather, peak color is likely to be a bit later than normal which means “this could be a year when a lot of the New England region turn at the same time. It usually takes about five or six weeks for the wave of peak color to move from the far-northern mountains to the coasts of Connecticut and Rhode Island. This year, though, with an anticipated late peak up north, the whole timetable could be condensed with a strong October cold snap,” Salge wrote.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Fall foliage 2023 forecast in RI: Here are leaf peeping predictions