KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — It’s that time of year when people from near and far flock to East Tennessee to see the beautiful fall colors of the Appalachian and Great Smoky Mountains. However, the scenic landscapes will look different to some this season because of dry weather conditions over the last month.

Doctor Wayne Clatterbuck is the Professor of Silviculture and Forest Management at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. He also serves as the Forestry Specialist with the UT Extension Service, which has an office in 95 counties.

One of the first things Dr. Clatterbuck spoke about was the fact that fall colors are popping up later than usual, attributing that to a warming climate. He said peak leaf season used to be the third weekend in October, now it’s about a week to 10 days after that.

Clatterbuck said the fall foliage comes down to two things: temperature and moisture.

“Typically, moisture, as long as we don’t have too much or too little precipitation, the leaf color is very good,” he said. He went on to talk about how this year is different.

“We had adequate rain fall up through mid-September or so and now it’s turned dry and what that means is we’ll still have leaf color, it probably won’t be as brilliant as it would be as if we had adequate moisture, but we still have color,” Dr. Clatterbuck said, adding colors would be a little duller.

He went on to explain why no two fall seasons are alike.

“One of the cool things about Tennessee is we have so many species and all those species have different characteristics and different colors,” he said.

“There’s some trees that require quite a bit of moisture, things like tulip, poplar, cherry and so forth,” he continued. “They’ve already, because of the lack of moisture, dropped their leaves.”

He went on to talk about the trees that will still bring East Tennessee some fall colors this season.

“There’s other trees that tolerate a moisture deficit a little better and those are the ones that are still having a lot of color and they tend to move toward the red colors,” he said. “The oaks and the dogwoods and so forth are the ones that tend to tolerate that moisture deficit longer.” 

Clatterbuck encourages people to get out into nature, especially after the years of the pandemic.

“In the last two years everybody wants to get outside and they wanted to get to see those leaves,” he said. “I think there’s a lot more interest in it this year than last year just because of COVID and we want to get outside and see what the leaf colors are.”

Dr. Clatterbuck said people do not need to have a specific date to find the best leaf color, adding it has to do with elevations. He said as the season continues the fall colors will continue to move to the lower elevations.

As for how much longer the beauty of fall will last? He predicted people having another week to ten-days to see the fall foliage before the leaves fall.