While mid-October can be the peak for fall color in the region, this year the show is shaping up to lack vibrancy in west central Illinois and southeast Iowa.
The ideal weather to induce a glorious arboreal splendor is warm, sunny days and cool nights.
While the region has definitely seen very warm days along with cooler nights, the gorgeous reds, oranges, and yellows of autumn also need moisture to come out and play.
Brian Pierce, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in the Quad Cities, said a good chunk of the region is abnormally dry or in moderate drought right now.
“The trees are generally going under stress, and to protect themselves, they turn around and start dropping their leaves, so the fall colors are probably not going to be as good as they would be in year’s past,” he said.
That’s why you might see leaves on the ground and hear them crunch under your feet as if it’s a regular autumn, even though there’s not a lot of color for mid-October.
Pierce said this spring started in a drought. Then we moved into a rather wet spell in late spring and into summer. But by late August, conditions pretty much dried up.
“The rain that we did get during the year helped bring out the leaves and all the trees, but then when we got into the late summer and fall with the lack of rainfall, the trees started going under stress,” he said.
And now, the trees that have been too stressed to put on a show are expected to get smacked with the season’s first frost and freeze —days after temps were in the mid-80s.
Those big swings can also be a major color killer.
“That's going to cause the trees to say, okay, the growing season is over. I need to start thinking about going dormant for the wintertime,” Pierce said.
Pierce said persistent high pressure over the area allowed warm air to keep coming in and that’s why things were abnormally warm for so long.
A change in the airflow is now bringing in cooler air from Canada. With how warm it’s been, Pierce said the temperature drop is bit of a shock for everyone.
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