When is peak fall foliage at Channel Islands National Park?

We don’t forecast fall color at Channel Islands National Park. Island scrub and grassland. No deciduous canopy. Publishing a modeled date here would be a category error rather than an uncertain forecast.

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National Park·California·69,237 acres

Channel Islands National Park

Forecast issued Nov 10, 7:57am ET

Photograph: More Than Just Parks

We don’t forecast fall color here. Island scrub and grassland. No deciduous canopy. Our model reads latitude and elevation and will happily produce a date for anywhere; publishing one here would be a category error rather than an uncertain forecast, so we don’t.

Still greenStartingNearly peakPeakPast peakNo fall canopy we forecast

Around Channel Islands National Park The park is outlined. The counties around it are painted by how far along their color is today, Nov 10.

The place

Five islands an hour off the coast of Ventura, California, that feel like they belong to another continent. Over 2,000 plant and animal species found nowhere else on Earth, including the island fox, which is the size of a house cat and afraid of nothing. No cars, no shops, no cell service. Just wind and wildflowers and water so blue it looks fake in photographs.

Established 1980. About 263,000/year visitors.

Plan this trip

If you can only come on certain days

Set the days you can be here. Everything under them answers for those days, not for peak.

ArrivingLeaving

Thursday, November 5 to Friday, November 6

You’ll find it peak color.

That's the day our forecast puts peak color here.

What turns: Fremont cottonwood, white alder, willow, California black oak, bigleaf maple
Entrance: No entrance fee

What turns, and when

Fremont cottonwood27%
white alder18%
willow18%
California black oak17%
bigleaf maple9%
blue oak8%

Also named across California, outside what the canopy read measures here: Quaking Aspen.

Eastern Sierra aspens turn brilliant gold against granite walls, black oaks in Yosemite Valley go bronze and russet, and cottonwoods line the desert creeks in pale yellow.

Across California as a whole: Late September to mid-October in the Sierra, late October to mid-November in Yosemite Valley.

Questions people ask about Channel Islands National Park

When is peak fall foliage at Channel Islands National Park?: We don’t forecast fall color at Channel Islands National Park. Island scrub and grassland. No deciduous canopy. Publishing a modeled date here would be a category error rather than an uncertain forecast.
Is there an entrance fee at Channel Islands National Park?: Entrance fee Free.

This forecast is built from the species that stand here, their elevation and this September’s weather, and corrected in season by cameras, foresters and our own crew. Out here we score it against NASA's satellite record of when the canopy shuts down, read inside each unit’s own boundary: two dates in three land within 12 days of it. How this map is made

All of California

Nearby, and when they turn

Los Padres is on the map above, with its own date.

Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation AreaCA · about 67 miles
Peak Nov 6 best Nov 5 to 8
Angeles National ForestCA · about 108 miles
Peak Nov 1 best Oct 31 to Nov 3
Sequoia National ForestCA · about 166 miles
Peak Oct 16 best Oct 15 to 18
San Bernardino National ForestCA · about 173 miles
Peak Oct 29 best Oct 28 to 31